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American History told by
Contemporaries
®
Eacu VOLUME INDEXED AND SOLD SEPARATELY.
os
z
Vor. I. Era of Colonization, 1492-1689
Published 1897
Vor. II. Building of the Republic, 1689-1783
Published 1898
Vor. III. National Expansion, 1783-1845
Published 1900
Vor. IV. Welding of the Nation, 1845-1900
WITH GENERAL INDEX Published 1901
Vor. V. Twentieth Century United States,
1900-1929
WITH VOLUME INDEX Published 1929
č
BY THE SAME EDITOR
A Source-Book of American History
The Source-Book is independent of the four volumes of Contem-
poraries, and contains no articles which appear in the larger series.
č
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
American History told by
Contemporaries
aie
VOLUME V
TWENTIETH CENTURY UNITED STATES
1900—1929
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2024
httos://archive.org/details/americanhistoryt00O05albe_ u0c9
American History told by
Contemporaries
VOLUME V
TI ENTTETIT CENTURY
ONITED STATES
1900-1929
EDITED BY
ALBERT BUSHNELL HART
PROFESSOR OF GOVERNMENT EMERITUS IN Ee UNIVERSITY
AUTHOR OF “FORMATION OF THE Union,” “SALMON P. CHASE,”
“Monroe DOCTRINE,” “NATIONAL IpEALs HISTORICALLY TRACED,”
“AMERICAN Hisrory Maps,” Erc., Erc.
EDITOR OF “AMERICAN Nation,” “AMERICAN YEAR Book,”
“COMMONWEALTH History oF MassacHuseETTs,” Erc., Erc.
HIsTORIAN OF THE
U. S. GEORGE WASHINGTON BICENTENNIAL COMMISSION
WITH THE COLLABORATION OF
JOHN GOULD CURTIS
FORMERLY ASSISTANT IN GOVERNMENT IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY
NEW YORK
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON
COLLIER-MACMILLAN LIMITED
32995
COPYRIGHT, 1929,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photo-
copying, recording or by any information storage
and retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the Publisher.
Fourteenth Printing, 1968
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, NEW YORK
COLLIER-MACMILLAN CANADA, LTD., TORONTO, ONTARIO
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
E
73
H32
v5
Preface
In these modern days the significance of historical souzces, as the
only foundation of the study and teaching of history, government
and international law, needs no defence or explanation. The funda-
mental idea that historical investigation and historical writing must be
based on ascertained occurrences and expressions from personal experi-
ence, is now deeply rooted in the minds of historical writers, of teach-
ers of history, and of publishers of historical books.
This method has been furthered by the World War, which presented
tremendously important problems of historical evidence. For ten
years a battle of books has raged, almost as full of animosity as the
struggles of the armies in the field, upon the question of what actually
took place in the cabinets of Europe immediately preceding the out-
break of hostilities. The dreadful question of the responsibility for
that war has been subjected to the test of contemporary verbal state-
ments, despatches, and telegrams; and also to subsequent explana-
tions of responsible statesmen of the various countries involved.
Never has there been such intensity of search and comparison of all
publications, such delving in the intimate archives of the govern-
ments concerned, such concern over the exact wording of historical
records.
That influence has also affected the attitude of the public mind in
the United States of America toward the search for ascertained truth
with regard to the connection of the United States with that gigantic
struggle. Never in the history of the Republic has there been such an
outpouring of intimate personal material and the contents of secret or
revealed government archives, as during the last ten years.
It is not the purpose of this fifth volume of the American History
Told by Contemporaries to devote disproportionate space to that con-
troversy; but it has been found indispensable to print a body of care-
fully selected material relating to vital incidents and policies during
the war. This volume recognizes the fact that every year of the last
Vv
vi Preface
three decades has furnished absorbing problems; and recorded varying
views and recollections of protagonists in American public life.
A glance at the Table of Contents will reveal the editor’s conviction
that the history of the United States is not concentrated in Washington
nor in the national government. The real history of the United States
involves millions of individuals and scores of concrete problems.
Hence this volume follows the policy of the four preceding volumes in
furnishing evidence that the complete history of our country involves
the status of the people of the Nation; their origin; their spread over
the land; their division into sections; their races; and the question of
immigration. The industry of the American people is part of their
history just as much as their politics.
On the other hand, we Americans are deeply interested in our
governments—national, state, and local—as well as in the combination
of public men in parties, and the antagonisms of party contests.
Particular attention is therefore paid in the volume to the great figures
who have come forward to represent the various ideas of their country-
men. Numerous chapters are devoted to extracts from original dis-
cussions of the political questions of the time.
Other portions of the volume are devoted to vital questions of
public welfare, including dependents and criminals, urban problems,
labor problems, public utilities. Due space is allotted to the intel-
lectual life of the American people, as shown in their education and
their literature.
The greatest crisis of the United States Government in the field of
this volume is the World War, a crisis paralleled as a period of na-
tional danger only by the American Revolution and the Civil War
Hence the efforts to reach a decision as to the responsible part which
the United States took in the World War. This volume gives op-
portunity for some of the men who were deepest in those controversies
to tell us what went on while the United States was a neutral; what.
brought the Nation to the issue of war; and what were the conditions
of the struggle in field, camp. transport and hospital. No writer has as
yet performed the task of furnishing a complete picture of the relation
of the United States to European affairs; but the selections in this
volume on the war and the subsequent readjustment will enable the
student and reader to realize what those who were closest to the con-
troversy believed, sought, proposed, and carried through.
Pretace vii
In the last part of this volume the effort is made to give people who
have been in the midst of the crisis the opportunity to make clear the
confusion and difficulties of the status of the United States since the
peace of rọrọ toward the rest of the world—whether members of the
League of Nations or outside of it. By the method of calling upon one
writer after another to tell something of what he has seen, and what he
believes to have been essential for the welfare of the Nation, con-
troversial treatment of those questions is avoided.
A practical difficulty in making up this volume has been that sub-
stantially all the material, except extracts from public records, is copy-
righted, and can be printed only with the consent of the original
writer, his publisher, or other representatives. Some excellent pieces
had to be omitted because the legal owner of the copyright could not
be ascertained.
Throughout the process of the work Mr. John G. Curtis, of the
Harvard Law School, has been an unfailing and sagacious aid. It
is a fundamental condition of the work that it shall be as nearly as
possible a letter-perfect transcript of the original sources; and in this
and other necessary comparison with originals Miss Mabel F. Reed has
been very efficient.
To these acknowledgments the editor must add his sense of personal
indebtedness to the students and readers and libraries throughout the
country whose support of the enterprise of the American History told
by Contemporaries, during the thirty years since the publication of the
first volume, has encouraged the author and his aids in the labor
of unearthing and fitting together these two hundred and two ex-
tracts, from the original printed statements of a host of men and
women in a variety of callings and experiences. The numerous con-
stituency of readers is highly valued, because it is an evidence through-
out the country that teachers and writers of history are depending
upon actualities as a basis of historical knowledge, alongside the
ripened judgments of the numerous investigators and writers, who
also must usually base their results upon the records of the experience
of other people.
ALBERT BUSHNELL HART
Widener Library
Cambridge, Mass.
October, 1920
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Contents
PART 1
PRACTICAL INTRODUCTION FOR TEACHERS,
PUPILS, LIBRARIES, AND STUDENTS
CHAPTER I— SIGNIFICANCE AND DERIVATION OF SOURCES
. Educative Value of Sources
. How to Find and Use Sources
. Classification of Official Materials in This Volume
. Observers and Critics of American Conditions
. Classification of Economic and Social Selections . ; k
. Classification of Selections on the World War . : 5 5
PART II
THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE
CHAPTER [I— POPULATION AND DISTRIBUTION
. James Fullarton Muirhead:
A Traveler at the Opening of the Century, 1900 .
. Professor Herbert Everett Van Norman:
Rural Conveniences, 1912
. Minister Wu Ting-Fang:
A Chinese View of American Manners, 1914
. Ex-President Theodore Roosevelt:
Hyphenated Americanism, 1916
. Samuel Crowther:
The Flapper: A National Institution, 1926.
CHAPTER III—SECTIONS AND NEW STATES
Frederic C. Howe:
The Great Empire by the Lakes, 1900 .
Professor Albert Bushnell Hart:
Remedies for the Southern Problem,1905 . . © «© e a
ix
PAGE
14
22
25
29
33
37
41
21.
22.
23:
24.
25.
26.
27.
29.
Contents
PAGE
. Charles Moreau Harger:
Arizona and New Mexico, TOLE . . . «+. « « o o « 40
. Charles Moreau Harger:
The Oil Fields of Oklahoma, 1919 Ii: #: 6 Nee, Merion.» Gt
. George Palmer Putnam:
Sport in the West, 1922 . . : = foe eer T ae SG
. Charles H. Markham:
The Strategy of Locating a Railroad, 1925. . . «. «© «© «= 59
CHAPTER IV—IMMIGRATION AND RACE ELEMENTS
. James B. Connolly:
Tandin e an INGO MOAB ES GH
. Jacob A. Riis:
Our Italian Laborers, 1901. Sf eo SE Meee ake) een Ol
. Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe:
A Self-Made Negro, 1910 x. ea Ra > NESS aE E att mare AL
Professor Frederic Austin Ogg:
The Japanese Problem, 1913. ; 4 5 3 : : D : - 74
Professor Robert de Courcy Ward:
Our New Immigration Policy, 1924 ee eo ee 7S
PART I
GOVERNMENT AND DEPENDENCIES
CHAPTER V— PRESIDENT THEODORE ROOSEVELT
Hermann H. Kohlsaat:
Roosevelt and Hanna, 1901. ` > 5 : ; ; ; 3 eon
Secretary John Hay:
A Statesman's View of a President, 1904 7 8
James Ford Rhodes:
Roosevelt the Trust Buster, 1904 . : 5 ; : : : : OL
Lord Charnwood:
An Outsider’s View of Roosevelt as Peacemaker, 1905 wes AOS
CHAPTER VI— NATIONAL ADMINISTRATION AND
PROBLEMS
Congressman Oscar W. Underwood:
The Corrupting Power of Public Patronage, rigor. . : : : 6 Gye
. Secretary George B. Cortelyou:
The Department of Commerce and Labor, 1903 . . «. = . . IOI
Professor Arthur N. Holcombe:
Distinctions among Parties, 1900-1908 cb es ‘cole « r06
30.
ZT.
46.
Government and Dependencies
William Dudley Foulke:
The Campaign of 1912 .
Ex-President Theodore Roosevelt:
The Bolter’s Justification, 1912
. Dixon Merritt:
The Task of the Presidency, 1925
CHAPTER ViI — PACIFIC DEPENDENCIES AND POLICIES
. Professor Luella Miner:
Prisoners in Peking, 1900
. Secretary William Howard Taft:
Progress in the Philippines, 1907
. Belmore Browne:
Alaska, 1914
3 Cienie KS Lonla
Patriarchal Hawaii, 1916
. Captain Waldo Evans:
Samoa, 1921
CHAPTER VIII — LATIN-AMERICAN POLICIES
. Wallace Irwin:
Monroe Doctrinings, 1906
. Lieutenant-Colonel George W. Goethals:
The Panama Canal, 1909
. President Woodrow Wilson:
Relations of the United States with Mexico, 1913
. Leopold Grahame:
The Latin View of the Monroe Doctrine, 1914 . . à.
. Charles C. Thach:
The Modern Monroe Doctrine, 1920
. Knowlton Mixer:
American Coéperation in Porto Rico, 1925
. Professor William R. Shepherd:
Uncle Sam, Imperialist, 1927
. Ex-Secretary Charles Evans Hughes:
Pan-American Problems, 1928
PART IV
INTERNATIONAL ASPECTS
CHAPTER IX— EUROPEAN FOREIGN RELATIONS
Frederick L. Emory:
The Consular Service Aids Trade, 1901
PAGE
174
II
186
xii
59.
6o.
6I
Contents
. Ex-President Theodore Roosevelt and Secretary K a
Warning to the German Emperor, 1902
. Walter E. Weyl:
America and European Competitors, 1916 .
. National Civil Service Reform League:
Appointment of Ministers, 1919
CHAPTER X— PLANS FOR WORLD PEACE
. Wallace Irwin:
Clasp Hands, Ye Nations, 1905
. Secretary Elihu Root:
America’s Peace Policy, 1907
. Denys P. Myers:
Results of the Hague Convention, 1914
. President A. Lawrence Lowell:
A League to Enforce Peace, 1915 .
CHAPTER XI— THE NATIONAL DEFENCE
. near-Admiral A. T. Mahan:
Fortify the Panama Canal, 1911 .
. Lieutenant-Commander D. Pratt Mannix:
The Light Cavalry of the Seas, 1914
. Literary Digest:
Mobilization “ Blunders,” 1916
. Lieutenant-Commander Fitzhugh Green:
“Stand by to Ram!” 1922
. Secretary John W. Weeks:
Peace-Time Work of the Army, 1923
PART V
DOMESTIC PROBLEMS AND ADVANCES
CHAPTER XII — CATASTROPHES
Major-General Adolphus W. Greely:
The San Francisco Disaster, 1906
Senate Committee on Commerce:
The Sinking of the Titanic, 1912 .
. L. C. Speers:
Saving New Orleans, 1927
PAGE
190
193
198
202
203
209
214
219
223
226
229
234
240
245
251
Domestic Problems and Advances
xiii
CHAPTER XII — TRANSPORTATION AND COMMUNICATION
. Mary C. Blossom:
James J. Hill, Builder of a Frontier, 1901
. Max Bennet Thrasher:
Rural Bree Delivery 1903) n a es
. The Outlook:
Parcel Post, 1913. ; : PERIN
. Allen D. Albert:
The Wizardry of the Automobile, 1922 .
66. T. Warren Allen and Others:
72.
73:
74.
75:
76.
77:
78.
79:
Road Improvement, 1924
. William B. Stout:
Flivvers of the Air, 1926
. Captain Charles A. Lindbergh:
An Epochal Flight, 1927
CHAPTER XIV — NATIONAL FINANCE
. Secretary William Gibbs McAdoo:
The Liberty Loan, 1917 .
. Director Charles G. Dawes:
Benefits of the Budget, 1922 .
. The New Republic:
Our War Debtors, 1922 .
Nils A. Olsen and Others:
Federal Farm Loans, 1924
Krickel K. Carrick:
The Federal Reserve System, 1926
CHAPTER XV — AGRICULTURE, CONSERVATION, AND
RECLAMATION
Harold Howland:
Reclamation and Conservation, 1908
Chief Engineer Frederick H. Newell:
Water on Arid Lands, 1910 .
Dean Eugene Davenport:
Scientific Farming, 1912 :
President Kenyon L. Butterfield:
The Farmer’s Chance, 1919
H. W. Hochbaum:
Agricultural Extension Work, 1924
Chief Forester William B. Greeley:
Relation of Geography to Timber Supply, 1925 .
PAGE
256
261
265
268
271
275
280
307
323
327
xiv Contents
89.
go.
gl.
92.
93-
94.
95.
PAGE
. Director George Otis Smith:
Sources of Mechanical Power, 1925. . : 5 6 5 3 a 5 332
. Ex-Governor Frank O. Lowden:
The New Economics of Farming, 1926 s 3 5 ; z 3 335
. Victor H. Schoffelmayer:
SPI GING, even, CC 5 BO
CHAPTER XVI— MONOPOLIES AND TRUSTS
. Justice John Marshall Harlan:
The Northern Securities Case, 1904 . z 5 é 9 b : 5 By
. William Jennings Bryan:
Government Ownership of Railroads, 1906 . : Phila : z 4 BSA
. Justice Horace H. Lurton:
The Coal Monopoly, 1912. r 3 : 5 : 3 È + 856
. Senator Robert M. LaFollette, Shr
A Liberal’s Protest, 1912 o Me tl ne ee Ores OO
. President Woodrow Wilson:
Regulation of Trusts, 1914 . : : ‘ 3 : > : ; < 365
. Professor Frederic Austin Ogg:
Railroad IOC Dy NOSSO e
PART VI
ADMINISTRATION METHODS AND EXPEDIENTS
CHAPTER XVII— PARTY AND POLITICAL ORGANIZATION
Albert Halstead:
The Party Campaign Committee, 1904 . . 3 . «tt 37A
Professor Charles A. Beard:
Political Finances, 1910 . ; A ‘ 4 : ; z ; 5 hee
Professor James T. Young:
Party Organization in State and County, 1915 . : ; t mesos
The New Republic:
Votin efor Erestdent Torone SC X T387
Professor William B. Munro:
The National Conventtons,1924. . . . . . . +. « 301
CHAPTER XVII PUBLIC QUESTIONS IN STATES AND
CERES
Mayor Tom Johnson:
A City Reformer, 1901 ee, eee ee : : - 396
Fremont Older:
Purifying San Francisco Politics, 1906 . s > a 406
IOI.
102.
103.
104.
105.
Administration
. Professor Arthur N. Holcombe:
The Recall, 1912 . 3 =) iets Pes aes
EIC Cara.
TOR SURO Of (COPE OVO we aa a
. Delegate Albert Bushnell Hart:
The Initiative and Referendum, 1917
. E. S. Taylor:
Traffic Problem of Chicago, 1924
. Superintendent Lynn G. Adams:
State Police Problems, 1926.
CHAPTER XIX — THE COURTS AND THEIR PLACE IN
GOVERNMENT
Elbert F. Baldwin:
The Supreme Court Justices, 1911
Professor James T. Young:
The Federal Judiciary System, 1923 .
Fabian Franklin:
Five to Four in the Supreme Court, 1923 .
Judge Benjamin Barr Lindsey:
The Work of a Juvenile Court, 1925 . . . »« «©
PART VII
THE HUMAN RELATIONS
CHAPTER XX — PROBLEMS OF CRIME AND MORALS
Glenn Frank:
Piety and Playfulness, 1922
. President Emeritus Charles W. Eliot:
Prohibition, 1923 .
. Clarence S. Darrow:
Legislating Morals, 1924
. William Seagle:
>
“Criminal Syndicalism,” 1925
_ Professor Raymond Moley:
Politics and Crime, 1926
CHAPTER XXI—LABOR AND INDUSTRY
. Secretary James J. Davis:
A Laborer Meets His First Capitalist, 1900
. President Theodore Roosevelt:
The Courts and Labor, 1908 .
436
439
avl
112.
TIS,
ITA:
II5.
116.
II7.
118.
IIQ.
I20.
I2I.
T22:
Contents
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes:
The Labor Union Boycott, 1915
Burton J. Hendrick:
The Age of Big Business, 1919 .
Owen R. Lovejoy:
Prohibiting Child Labor, 1919
Ezekiel Henry Downey:
Workmen’s Compensation, 1923 .
CHAPTER XXII — CONCERNS OF WOMEN
Mary H. Parkman:
Education of Jane Addams, 1900
President Henry S. Pritchett:
Technical Education for Women, 1906
Florence Lucas Sanville:
Night Work for Women, 1910
Max Eastman:
Is Woman Suffrage Important? 1911
Jane Addams:
Larger Aspects of the Woman’s Movement, 1914
PART VIII
NATIONAL LEADERS
CHAPTER XXIII — AMERICAN PUBLIC MEN
Henry McFarland:
John Hay, a Great Secretary of State, 1900
Professor Felix Frankfurter:
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Eminent Jurist, 1916 .
. Ex-Secretary Elihu Root:
Joseph H. Choate, Counsellor and Ambassador, 1917
. Edward G. Lowry:
William S. Sims, Earnest Admiral, 1921 .
5. Andrew Ten Eyck:
Elihu Root, Public Servant, 1921
. Senator James W. Wadsworth, Jr.:
Henry Cabot Lodge, a Massachusetts Institution, 1924
. The Nation:
Eugene Debs, Social Leader, 1926
Ray ie bucker:
William E. Borah, Free Lance, 1926 .
PAGE
470
473
477
482
487
490
493
498
502
506
510
514
530
533
129.
130.
Tacs
132.
139.
140.
TAES
142.
143.
National Leaders xvii
CHAPTER XXIV — PRESIDENT WOODROW WILSON
PAGR
Ex-Secretary Josephus Daniels:
ARbreaker of Erecedenis, 1912 a RST PETS, T S Se ES
Sir A. Maurice Low:
“Too Proud to Fight,” 1915 ; ee NES oad
Professor Edgar E. Robinson and Professor Victor J. West:
Leadership of Woodrow Wilson, 1917 AAEE ar ere Ries RON 5 51S)
Ex-Secretary David F. Houston:
An Estimate of Woodrow Wilson, 1918 . . . .« « « « S553
PART IX
THE ARTS AND SCIENCES
CHAPTER XXV — PHILANTHROPY AND CULTURAL
ADVANCE
. Walter Hines Page:
The Pan-American Exposition, 1901 APRS CA ls S62
. Charles Edward Russell:
Theodore Thomas, Orchestral Conductor,1905 . . .« o « ~ 505
. Edward Bok:
IGA BAI OIG Tare 5 6 oh 4 6. 6 Oo. a Gy
. Glenn Frank:
INT MARIA Of SPNA MOR a o & 6 oo 6 @ 45 o Gye
. Lewis Mumford:
The Architecture of Expediency, 1924 eee EN Khon Gos S70
. Leonard McGee:
ihe New Yorki Legals Ard Socidy a025 T a ss en ee SOA.
CHAPTER XXVI— EDUCATION
Superintendent William Wirt:
Puoro Sekol Tadeu S roro m matte tno eo aes) So ee SOS
Frederic W. Keough:
Employment of Disabled Service Men,1918 . «. « «© «© a SOT
President Emeritus Charles W. Eliot:
Education Since the World War, 1920. T06
Edwin E. Slosson:
The Unnerst Cha LOGY, TORT we) aes) See eee et ent. OOT
John Palmer Gavit:
A Workaday College, 1925 . Se, 0 : i ; 5 A . 605
xviii Contents
144.
145.
146.
147.
148.
149.
150.
CHAPTER XXVII— AMERICAN LITERATURE
George Gladden:
Nature and John Burroughs, 1900
Hildegarde Hawthorne:
Our Mark Twain, 1914
Edmund Lester Pearson:
Review of Book Reviews, 1916
Percy H. Boynton:
The Modern Drama, 1919
Carl Van Doren:
Two Eminent Novelists: Cabell and Hergesheimer, 1922 .
Vachel Lindsay:
A Poet Questions Progress, 1923
Richard G. de Rochemont:
Tabloid Journalism, 1926
. “Neri” and “Wamp”:
The News in Brief, 1926
CHAPTER XXVIII — SCIENCE AND INVENTION
. Octave Chanute:
Early Flying Experiments, 1909
. John Winthrop Hammond:
Steinmetz: Immigrant, Scientist and Teacher, 1889-1912
. Henry Ford:
Ingenuity in Motor Manufacturing, 1914 .
. New York Times Current History:
War Surgery, 1918 : :
. New York Times Current History:
The First Continuous Trans-Atlantic Flight, 1919 .
. Judson C. Welliver:
The Project at Muscle Shoals, 1922
. Graham McNamee:
A Broadcasting Studio, 1925
. Arthur Pound:
The Telephone Idea, 1926
CHAPTER XXIX— RECREATION AND TRAVEL
. Albert Bigelow Paine:
Complexities of Hotel Operation, 1903
. Doctor J. P. Casey:
Our Great American Game, 1906
. Enos A. Mills:
Racing an Avalanche, 1912
630
644
649
654
658
662
667
672
677
681
684
163.
164.
165.
166.
167.
168.
169.
170.
EJT.
The Arts and Sciences
Ex-President Caroline Hazard:
WOES OPA OSAMA morra A e a ha e
Michael Gross and “P. W.”:
Oi WOW EEERICUNES UWS 5 5 Cl
PART X
THE WORLD WAR
CHAPTER XXX — THE UNITED STATES AS A NEUTRAL
Professor Charles Chency Hyde:
The United States as a Neutral, 1914
Ambassador Walter Hines Page:
An Ambassador on Duty, 1914 .
C. Hartley Grattan:
An Impressionable Diplomat, 1915
President Woodrow Wilson:
The Lusitania Note, 1915
Alan Seeger:
A Message to America, 1916
CHAPTER XXXI— BUCKLING ON THE ARMOR
Robert W. Bruére:
The International Food Problem, 1916
Senator Henry Cabot Lodge:
War with Germany, 1917
. Literary Digest:
Insurance for Soldiers, 1917
. Commissioner Frederic C. Howe:
War-Time Hysteria, 1917
. Fred H. Rindge, Jr.:
Foreigners in the Army, 1918
. Raymond B. Fosdick:
Training Camp Activities, 1918 .
. Ex-President Theodore Roosevelt:
Broomstick Preparedness, 1918 .
CHAPTER XXXII — OVER THERE
. Richard Harding Davis:
An Embattled Press Correspondent, 1914 .
. Joyce Kilmer:
The Cathedral of Rheims, 1915
. John Masefield:
American Ambulance Field Service, 1916
xix
PAGE
690
692
695
701
187.
188.
189.
Igo.
IQI.
192.
195.
Contents
. Alan Seeger:
In Memory of the American Volunteers, 1916 .
. Henry Seidel Canby:
A Lesson from the Tanks, 1917 .
. Anonymous:
An American in the British Aw Service, 1918 .
. Colonel Hiram Bingham:
Training American Aviators in France, 1918 .
. General John J. Pershing:
The St. Mihiel Operation, 1918 .
. Edwin L. James:
The Doughboys Over the Top, 1918
. Katherine Mayo:
Women with the Y. M. C. A., 1918
CHAPTER XXXIII— WAR ON THE SEAS
Captain Thomas G. Frothingham:
The American Transports, 1917 .
Albert Kinross:
How it Feels to be Torpedoed, 1917
Enos B. Comstock:
The Destroyers, 1918
Captain Thomas G. Frothingham:
U-Boat Raids off the American Coast, 1918
PART XI
AFTERMATH OF THE WAR
CHAPTER XXXIV — THE ARMISTICE AND PEACE
New York Times Current History:
The Armistice, 1918
Professor John Spencer Bassett:
Peace Conference at Versailles, 1919 .
. Senator William E. Borah:
Against the Versailles Treaty, 1921
CHAPTER XXXV — POLITICAL AND SOCIAL MATTERS
. Professor Zechariah Chafee, Jr.:
Freedom of Speech in War Time, 1919
Judson C. Welliver:
President Harding, 1923
790
794
799
802
804
808
814
820
824
831
Aftermath of the War Xxi
196. Louis J. Lang: eas
How Coolidge Got. the News, 1023 ~ w= ae er «4 ts 6. 6836
197. Professor John Spencer Bassett:
ISAO ULI ECT UO MNS 5 6 5 5 9 6G 6 6 5 Eee
198. Gerald W. Johnson:
The Ku-Kluxer, 1924 . fy ate Sac a oe els eis . 846
199. Mather A. Abbott:
Rhe INCISION AOD. a E a a a a a aa
200. The New York Times:
The Republican Landslide of 1928 . a . . «. e ~~. e 855
CHAPTER XXXVI— THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS AND THE
WORLD COURT
201. President Woodrow Wilson:
Wilson on the League of Nations, 1919 . . . . oe we OSO
202. Bishop William Lawrence:
Henry Cabot Lodge and the League of Nations, 1919 ; ar . 862
203. Professor Manley O. Hudson:
World Courting, 1923 . ae cae Mae 28 Rea Ty
204. Ex-President Woodrow Wilson:
Turane AOU? Backs HOP, ae a a a a aaO
CHAPTER XXXVII— THE PLACE OF THE UNITED STATES
IN THE WORLD
205. William Phillips:
The Diplomatic Service, 1920 . Se ty ce ee Fo a cy es
206. President Emeritus Charles W. Eliot:
American International Problems, 1922 . e ©. e è >e « 876
207. Mark Sullivan:
The Washington Conference, 1922 . $ 5 : ee < 88I
208. Professor Allyn A. Young:
Post-War Reparations, 1923 ae a ea a aa ev os rasos
[NDEX ° ° o ° o ° o ° v 6 ° o e . 89 I
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American History told by
Contemporaries
mn,
EARD
PRACTICAL INTRODUCTION
FOR TEACHERS, PUPILS, LIBRARIES, AND STUDENTS
CHAPTER I— SIGNIFICANCE AND DERIVATION
OF SOURCES
t. Educative Value of Sources
OWN to thirty years ago schools, colleges, and libraries had not
yet accepted the idea that source materials could be used to ad-
vantage by beginners in systematic reading and study of history.
Time and educational experience have gone far to establish those
studies from the primary authorities which are the basis of most of
our historical knowledge. The continued demand for the first four
volumes of the Contemporaries, from the publication of the first vol-
ume in 1897, and the preparation of several other collections of source
materials are evidences that students in secondary schools and col-
leges are more and more gaining practice in basing historical studies
on first-hand accounts. They are learning to weigh the conflicting
views of honest partisans, and to form their own opinions of the value
of human evidence. Thus the inquiring mind acquires an experience
of historic judgment.
Obviously great differences may develop in the testimony of two
utterly honest witnesses to the same event, because no two people
can see with the same eyes and hear with the same ears. Infinite are
2 Significance and Derivation of Sources [No. z
the forms and degrees of bias and prejudice which may result in great
divergences of viewpoint and conflicts in the reports of results. Users
of these sources will realize that the capacity and interest of each
writer must be weighed with his words, to handicap or confirm their
credibility. Unless the headnotes otherwise indicate, it may be as-
sumed that the authors represented are competent and sincere. That
they sometimes disagree with one another means simply that we are
still spared the dullness of unanimity, that all questions have two
sides, and that on both of them much may often justly be said.
Nowadays it is generally accepted that the reading of contemporary
accounts imparts to the study of history a flavor of immediacy that
makes for deeper interest and better recollection on the part of stu-
dents. Naturally, brief extracts such as these will not be sufficient for
all purposes, and in many instances it will prove desirable to read at
greater length some of the authorities quoted here.
If Volume V lacks the zest of romantic records of pioneer adventure,
or stirring tales of the struggle to maintain the Union, it does not
necessarily deal with a less interesting time. True, governmental
reforms are seldom exciting reading, and the aims even of the World
War were perhaps less tangible than those of our earlier conflicts.
But the first quarter of the Twentieth Century has been a time of
swift social and industrial and political movement, and especially a
time of the adaptation of science to the daily life of the people in such
ways as to produce profound changes. They have been meaningful
years.
2. How to Find and Use Sources
GuipEs. The most thorough-going recent development of sources
on current affairs is Milton Conover’s Working Manual of Originai
Sources in American Government (rev. ed., 1928). A case system for
the study of politics. An invaluable guide for those who wish to reach
official and unofficial sources on recent questions of American history,
government and politics.
The same method has been followed by Albert Bushnell Hart,
editor of The American Nation, a History. The three last volumes,
No. 2] How to Find and Use Sources 3
covering the same period as this fifth volume of the American History
Told by Contemporaries, contain each a classified bibliography. These
volumes are: J. H. Latané, America as a World Power [1897-1907];
F. A. Ogg, National Progress [1907-1917]; A. M. Schlesinger [1917-
1929] in progress.
Channing, Hart and Turner, Guide to the Reading and Study of
American History (rev. ed., 1912) contains many indications and dis-
cussions of sources. The sections 265-274 deal with the period from
1898 to Igo.
REcENT Histories. The best histories of the United States con-
tain classified and descriptive bibliographies, including sources.
Sources are diligently used as a basis in all the recent elaborate his-
tories of the United States, and especially in the following:
John S. Bassett, Expansion and Reform, 1889-1926 (Epochs of American History,
IV), has prefixed to each chapter an articulated bibliography of secondary works
and of sources, brought down to date of publication; taking the captions in se-
quence, this is a comprehensive guide to the sources in the last three decades.
Edward Channing, History of the United States (6 vols. published). The volume
VIII will include the period covered by Volume V of American History told by
Contemporaries.
Charles A. Beard and William C. Bagley, the American People (2 vols., 1920).
Homer C. Hockett and Arthur M. Schlesinger, Political and Soctal History of the
United States (second volume comes down to 1925).
James Ford Rhodes, The McKinley and Roosevelt Administrations (1897-1909).
Lester Burrell Shippee, Recent American History (1924)—Excellent lists of au-
thorities.
Mark Sullivan, Our Times, the United States, 1900-1925 (2 vols., 1926, 1927).
David P. Muzzey, The American Adventure (2 vols., 1927).
Allen Johnson (editor), Chronicles of America (50 vols.). Original edition completed
tg19; “Abraham Lincoln edition” published 1918-1921. The volumes bearing
on the United States in the Twentieth Century are: Vol. 46, C. R. Fish, Path of
Empire; Vol. 47, H. Howland, Theodore Roosevelt and His Times; Vol. 48, C.
Seymour, Woodrow Wilson and the World War.
ANNUALS AND CYCLOPEDIAS. Valuable and continuing sources are
found in most of the annual and cyclopedic works published in the
United States. The most important of these are the following:
Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, edited by E. R. A. Seligman. (In progress.)
4 Significance and Derivation of Sources [No. 2
New International Year Book (annual, 1908-1929).
World Almanac (annual).—Indispensable source of information for current hap-
penings and statistics.
Official Congressional Directory for the use uf the United States Congress (revised for
each annual session) .—Lists of legislative and some executive officials and judges.
Maps of congressional districts.
Records of Political Events (annual).
Encyclopedia Britannica (several editions between 1902 and 1929).—Many Amer-
ican articles written by Americans. Also Supplementary Volumes (vols. I-III,
1926).—New Edition of the new Encyclopedia Britannica in progress in 1929.
Encyclopedia Britannica, These Eventful Years (2 vols., 1924).
The Americana Annual (connected with Encyclopedia Americana (1923-1926).
Statesman’s Year Book (1864-1928).—An English standard publication with a
large section on the United States.
New International Year Book (1898-1927).—General in character. Compiled
articles on the United States.
Appleton’s Annual Cyclopedia (New York, 1901-1903).—Series began in 1861.
Many extracts from public documents.
American Year Book (annual volumes, 1910-1919; 1925-1928).—Prepared by a
Board representing national learned societies. Brief articles by experts on
progress of the year in many fields. Financed by the New York Times.
Dictionary of American Biography, edited by Allen Johnson; founded by Adolph
S. Ochs (1928).—Will eventually include about 50 volumes.
PERIODICALS. Most of the serious periodicals contain valuable and
quotable articles on history, politics, economics, social conditions and
international relations. Especially serviceable for materials, such as
are used in the Contemporaries, are the following:
New York Times Current History (monthly, 1914-1929).—Includes many monthly
summaries of world conditions.
Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (quarterly).
Political Science Quarterly, with supplements.—Discussions of pending questions
of government.
American Historical Review (quarterly).—Articles in its field, reviews, and current
information.
No. 2] How to Find and Use Sources
American Political Science Review (quarterly)—On governmental affairs, in the
same lines as the preceding titles.
Foreign Affairs (quarterly).—Many informational articles.
American Journal of International Law (quarterly).—Many narrative articles.
Foreign Policy Association issues many publications of current material.
Economic Geography (quarterly).
American Review of Reviews (monthly).
Forum (monthly).—Many political articles.
Nation (weekly) —Founded in 1866: ultra liberal
World’s Work (monthly).
New Republic (weekly).—Critical and somewhat destructive.
Atlantic Monthly (founded in 1853).
Outlook and Independent (weekly).—-Many articles on current events.
North American Review (monthly).—Successor to a famous and solid publication
founded in 1815.
The Historical Outlook (monthly).—Pays special attention to the use of sources in
teaching.
Dretomacy. In the field of government and diplomacy access to
the sources is aided by A. C. McLaughlin and Albert Bushnell Hart
(editors), Cyclopedia of American Government (3 vols., 1914-1916)—
Includes many biographical entries down to 1916.
Detailed bibliography on diplomacy in Channing, Hart and Turner, Guide, §§ 266-
268.
Bibliographical aids in Journal of International Law, many entries.
Parker T. Moon, Syllabus on International Relations (1925).—Very full and helpful.
Charles C. Hyde, International Law Chiefly as Interpreted and Applied by the United
States (2 vols., 1922).—A work of immense research, abounding in bibliography,
including many unusual sources.
Arthur N. Holcombe, The Political Parties of Today (1924).—Standard textbook
with references.
P. O. Ray, Political Parties and Practical Politics (1924).—Bibliographies include
sources.
NEWSPAPERS. A vast amount of original material finds its way
into the columns of the daily press, especially in reports of speeches
6 Significance and Derivation of Sources [No. 2
and documents, and personal narratives and arguments by public
men. Among the newspapers are:
United States Daily, published in Washington; prints significant sources from day
to day.
New Vork Times. The most powerful daily in the United States. “All the news
that’s fit to print” on politics and public questions from day to day.
The principal newspapers in the large cities, including the Springfield Republican.
ROOSEVELT PERIOD. A considerable number of sources are grouped
about Theodore Roosevelt and his time.
Hermann Hagedorn, Americanism of Theodore Roosevelt (1923).—Classified extracts.
Theodore Roosevelt, Autobiography (1913).
Theodore Roosevelt, Works (limited edition, 24 vols.).
Theodore Roosevelt, Works (popular edition, 22 vols.).
Joseph B. Bishop, Theodore Roosevelt and His Times as Shown in His Own Letters
(1920).
William D. Lewis, Life of Theodore Roosevelt (1919).
Howard C. Hill, Roosevelt and the Caribbean (1927).
Albert Bushnell Hart (editor), Roosevelt Encyclopedia—An alphabetical register
of Theodore Roosevelt’s views upon public and other questions, in progress in
1920.
Robert M. LaFollette, Autobiography (1913).
H. H. Kohlsaat, From McKinley to Harding (1922).
Wooprow WILson. Similarly numerous sources have been pub-
lished bearing on Woodrow Wilson and the United States in the
World War.
Edgar E. Robinson and Victor J. West, The Foreign Policy of Woodrow Wilson
(1913-1917). (Extracts.)
Ray Stannard Baker and William E. Dodd (editors), The Public Papers of Wood-
row Wilson (1925-1926).
Albert Shaw (editor), Woodrow Wilson. Messages and Papers (1917-10918).
A. B. Hart (editor), Selected Addresses and Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson (10918).
Ray Stanwood Baker, Woodrow Wilson and World Settlement (3 vols., 1923).—In-
cludes a volume of documents.
International Ideals (1919).—Collection from Woodrow Wilson material.
No. 3] Classif -ation of Official Materials 7
WorLD WAR.
A. E. McKinley (editor), Collected Materials for the Study of the War (1918).
James W. Gerard, My Four Years in Germany (1917).
John B. McMaster, The Untied States and the World War (1918).
Lester B. Shippee, Recent American History (1865-1922).—Very useful bibliog-
raphies of source material and narrative histories at the end of each chapter.
Burton J. Hendrick, Life and Letters of Walter H. Page (3 vols., 1921).
Many contemporary collections, official and private.
PEACE OF VERSAILLES.
Bernard M. Baruch, Making of the Reparation and Economic Sections of the Treaty
(1920).
Ray Stanwood Baker, Woodrow Wilson and World Settlement (3 vols., 1922).—
Includes a volume of documents.
Robert Lansing, The Peace Negotiations, a Personal Narrative (1921).
Joseph B. Tumulty, Woodrow Wilson as I Knew Him (1921).
Charles Shipley, Intimate Papers of Colonel House (4 vols., 1926-1928).
Henry Cabot Lodge, The Senate and the League of Nations (1924).
William E. Dodd, Woodrow Wilson and his Work.
3. Classification of Official Materials in This Volume
Recorps of various kinds furnish extremely valuable material:
first, the Congressional Record from which have been taken speeches
by Wadsworth (No. 126), Lodge (No. 171), and Borah (No. 193).
Extracts from presidential addresses are represented by Roosevelt
(No. 111) and Wilson (Nos. 40, 87).
Diplomatic correspondence will be found in the following: Root
(No. sr), Page (No. 166), Wilson (Nos. 168, 201).
Extracts have been made from official publications of the executive
departments and separate bureaus of the government: the Depart-
ment of Agriculture (Nos. 72, 81), the War Department (No. 59),
the Bureau of the Budget (No. 70), the Children’s Bureau (No. 114),
the Smithsonian Institution (Nos. 73, 152), and the opinions of the
8 Significance and Derivation of Sources [No. 3
Supreme Court (Nos. 83, 85, 112). Among official utterances of public
officials are extracts from the Governor of Samoa (No. 37) and the
Director of the Budget (No. 70).
Pusiic PAPERS. Somewhat less use has been made of speeches in
Congress and the Senate than in earlier volumes. Addresses in the
Senate comprise those of Wadsworth (No. 126), Lodge (No. 171), and
Borah (No. 193). A single Senate document is quoted (No. 60).
Presidential messages and diplomatic communications are repre-
sented by Roosevelt (Nos. 47, 111) and Wilson (Nos. 40, 87, 168, 201).
Other officials of the national government speaking in the line of office
are Root (No. 51), Taft (No. 34), Hughes (No. 45), Weeks (No. 58),
Dawes (No. 70), and McAdoo (No. 69). Military and naval officers
making formal reports include Evans (No. 37), Goethals (No. 39),
Greely (No. 59), and Pershing (No. 184). Completing the official
material are three reports of decisions by the United States Supreme
Court (Nos. 83, 85, 112).
STATESMEN. Probably of equal value to the student are the unoffi-
cial utterances of public men, such as Bryan (No. 84), Roosevelt
(Nos. 10 and 31), Hay (No. 24), Cortelyou (No. 28), Root (No. 123),
LaFollette (No. 86), Underwood (No. 27), Wilson (No. 204), Daniels
(No. 129), and Houston (No. 132).
PERSONS IN GOVERNMENT SERVICE. Large use has been made of
addresses by public officials, as Cortelyou (No. 28), Taft (No. 34),
Hughes (No. 45), Weeks (No. 58), McAdoo (No. 69), Wilson (No.
204). Books and magazine articles by public men in or out of office
have been drawn upon, as Underwood (No. 27), Goethals (No. 39),
Myers (No. 52), Houston (No. 132), besides part of a speech in the
Massachusetts Constitutional Convention of 1917 (No. 95). See also
National Civil Service Reform League (No. 49).
MItitTary AND NAVAL. Official reports by military and naval officers
include Captain Waldo Evans (No. 37), Major General Greely (No.
59), General Pershing (No. 184). Unofficial writings of military and
naval officers are by Lieutenant Colonel Goethals (No. 39), Rear
Admiral Mahan (No. 54), Lieutenant Commander Mannix (No. 55),
Lieutenant Commander Green (No. 57), Colonel Bingham (No. 183),
Captain Frothingham (Nos. 187, 190).
No. 3] Observers and Critics of American Conditions 9
4. Observers and Critics of American Conditions
PUBLIC AFFAIRS. A variety of leaders in civil affairs are repre-
sented in the selections: in business by Markham (No. 17) and Ford
(No. 154); in science by Lindbergh (No. 68) and Chanute (No. 152);
in agriculture by Lowden (No. 80), Davenport (No. 76), and Butter-
field (No. 77); in education by Pritchett (No. 117), Wirt (No. 139),
and Eliot (No. 141); and in reforms by Older (No. 94), Johnson (No.
95), Adams (No. 100), Lindsey (No. 104), Eliot (No. 106), Darrow
(No. 107), and Sanville (No. 118). Biographers, recording episodes
in the lives of eminent men, are Low (No. 130), Bok (No. 135), Russell
(No. 134), Hammond (No. 153), Macfarland (No. 121), Parkman
(No. 116), Blossom (No. 62), and Davis (No. 110).
OBSERVERS. Numerous extracts are printed from observers and
critics of conditions and affairs—in large part either journalists or
academic men—during the years before the World War: Lowell (No.
53), Beard (No. go), Young (No. 91), Riis (No. 19), Ogg (Nos. 21
and 88), Kohlsaat (No. 24), Myers (No. 52), Rhodes (No. 25), Hoi-
combe (Nos. 29 and 96), Foulke (No. 30), Hart (Nos. 13 and 98),
Howe (No. 12), Frankfurter (No. 122), Gardner (No. 97), Pearson
(No. 146), and Eastman (No. 119).
Pustic Service. H. H. Kohlsaat (No. 23), A. N. Holcombe (Nos.
29, 96), W. D. Foulke (No. 30), Theodore Roosevelt (No. 31), D. L.
Merritt (No. 32), W. J. Bryan (No. 84), F. A. Ogg (No. 88), Albert
Halstead (No. 89), C. A. Beard (No. go), J. T. Young (No. 91), W. B.
Munro (No. 93), Max Eastman (No. 119), E. G. Robinson (No. 131),
V. J. West (No. 131), J. C. Welliver (No. 157), J. S. Bassett (No. 197).
State and local political activities are presented by Fremont Older
(No. 94), A. B. Hart (No. 98), Raymond Moley (No. 109), G. W.
Johnson (No. 198).
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS have been treated by Leopold Grahame
(No. 41), C. C. Thach (No. 42), W. R. Shepherd (No. 44), A. L.
Lowell (No. 53), Henry Macfarland (No. 121), C. C. Hyde (No. 165),
Bishop William Lawrence (No. 202), M. O. Hudson (No. 203), William
Phillips (No. 205), C. W. Eliot (No. 206), Mark Sullivan (No. 207).
IO Significance and Derivation of Sources [No. 4
A. A. Young (No. 108). The problems of immigration have been
analyzed by Theodore Roosevelt (No. 10), J. A. Riis (No. 19), F. C.
Ogg (No. 21), J. B. Connolly (No. 18), R. de C. Ward (No. 22). For-
eign statesmen and critics have contributed some interesting pieces:
Wu Ting-Fang (No. 9), Lord Charnwood (No. 26), Sir A. Maurice
Low (No. 130).
LEGISLATIVE AND JUDICIARY. Problems of legislation are treated
by A. B. Hart (No. 98), Glenn Frank (No. 105), C. W. Eliot (No.
106), C. S. Darrow (No. 107), William Seagle (No. 108).
CRITICS OF THE Courts are E. F. Baldwin (No. tor), J. T. Young
(No. 102), Fabian Franklin (No. 103), B. B. Lindsay (No. 104), Felix
Frankfurter (No. 122), Raymond Moley (No. 109).
PERSONAL AND AUTOBIOGRAPHIC. Selections from autobiographies
and biographies and other writings concern the following eminent
persons: Booker T. Washington (No. 20), John Hay (Nos. 24, 47, 121),
Theodore Roosevelt (No. 26), T. J. Hill (No. 62), Fremont Older
(No. 94), Tom Johnson (No. 9s), J. J. Davis (No. 110), Jane Addams
(No. 116), Judge Holmes (No. 122), J. C. Choate (No. 123), Admiral
Sims (No. 124), Elihu Root (No. 125), H. C. Lodge (Nos. 126, 202),
Eugene Debs (No. 127), W. E. Borah (No. 128), Woodrow Wilson
(Nos. 129, 130, 131), D. F. Houston (No. 132), Theodore Thomas
(No. 134), Edward Bok (No. 135), C. W. Eliot (No. 141), John Bur-
roughs (No. 144), Mark Twain (No. 145), C. P. Steinmetz (No. 153),
Henry Ford (No. 154), W. H. Page (Nos. 166, 167), President Warren
G. Harding (No. 195), President Calvin Coolidge (No. 196).
SOCIAL AND Economic WRiTINGs on industries and general eco-
nomics: Crowther (No. 11), Howe (No. 12), Harger (Nos. 14, 15),
Markham (No. 17), Rhodes (No. 25), Emory (No. 46), Weyl (No. 48),
Blossom (No. 62), Thrasher (No. 63), Allen (No. 65), Olsen (No. 72),
Howland (No. 74), Davenport (No. 76), Butterfield (No. 77), Greeley
(No. 78), Smith (No. 79), Lowden (No. 89), Hochbaum (No. 8r).
nena (No. 82), Harlan (No. 83), Bryan (No. 84), Lurton
No. 85).
SCIENTIFIC MEN. Scientists, engineers, inventors, etc., are Octave
Chanute (No. 152), John Hays Hammond (No. 153), Henry Ford
(No. 154), E. A. Mills (No. 162).
No. 5] Classification of Economic and Social Selections 11
THE AMERICAN TRAVELLERS are Belmore Browne (No. 35), C. K.
London (No. 36), Knowlton Mixer (No. 43). Foreign travellers are
J. T. Muirhead (No. 7), Wu Ting-Fang (No. 9). Another foreign
critic is Sir A. M. Low (No. 130).
Critics. The professions are represented by many authoritative
writers. The opinions of academic critics of the affairs of this period
are represented by Van Norman (No. 8), A. B. Hart (Nos. 13, 98),
Ogg (No. 21, 88), Shepherd (No. 44), Miner (No. 33), Lowell (No.
53), Holcombe (Nos. 29, 96), Davenport (No. 76), Butterfield (No.
77), Beard (No. 90), Young (Nos. 91, 102), Munro (No. 93), Eliot
(Nos. 106, 141, 206), Pritchett (No. 117), Wirt (No. 139), Hazard
(No. 163), Hyde (No. 165), Bassett (Nos. 192, 197), Chafee (No. 194),
Abbott (No. 199), Hudson (No. 203).
ee eee
5. Classification of Economic and Social Selections
Economic. The effects of modern inventions on social and economic
life are presented by Albert (No. 65), Stout (No. 67), Lindbergh (No.
68), Smith (No. 79), McNamee (No. 158), Pound (No. 159). Writers
on financial matters are Carrick (No. 73), Hendrick (No. 113),
Frank (No. 136).
SoctaL Conpitions. Competent writers are H. E. Van Norman
‘No. 8), C. W. Eliot (No. 104), Glenn Frank (No. 105), C. S. Darrow
(No. 107), Mary H. Parkman (No. 116), Vachel Lindsay (No. 149),
M. A. Abbott (No. 199). Racial problems are handled by Hart (No.
13), Riis (No. 19), Scott (No. 20), Stowe (No. 20), Ogg (No. 21).
Critics of philanthropic methods are Frank (No. 136), McGee (No.
138). Athletics and amusements are presented by Putnam (No. 16),
McNamee (No. 158), Casey (No. 161).
LITERARY ACTIVITIES. The intellectual life of the American people
in the period is set forth in a variety of aspects in the following selec-
tions on the arts: Russell (No. 134), Bok (No. 135), Mumford (No.
137), Gross (No. 164). Critics of educational efforts are Pritchett
(No. 117), C. W. Eliot (No. 141), Slosson (No. 142), Gavit (No. 143),
M. A. Abbott (No. 199). Critics of literature are Pearson (No. 146),
Bovnton (No. 147), Van Doren (No. 148), De Rochemont (No. 150).
I2 Significance and Derivation of Sources [No. 6
Pieces in verse are numerous, written by Wallace Irwin (Nos. 38,
so), Vachel Lindsay (No. 149), “Neri”? (No. 151), “Wamp” (No.
151), Caroline Hazard (No. 163), Michael Gross (No. 164), “P. W.”
(No. 164), Alan Seegar (Nos. 169, 180), Joyce Kilmer (No. 178),
E. B. Comstock (No. 189).
The following women authors are represented: Luella Miner (No.
33), Charmian K. London (No. 36), Mary C. Blossom (No. 62),
Mary R. Parkman (No. 116), Florence L. Sanville (No. 118), Jane
Addams (No. 120), Caroline Hazard (No. 163), Katherine Mayo
(No. 186).
Newspaper editorials and staff articles have been taken from Liter-
ary Digest (Nos. 56, 172), Outlook (No. 64), New Republic (Nos. 71,
92), Nation (No. 127), New York Times (No. 200), New York Times
Current History (Nos. 155, 156, 191).
Foreign writers who comment on Americans are Wu Ting-Fang
(No. 9), Charnwood (No. 26), Masefield (No. 179), and Low (No. 130).
CORRESPONDENTS AND Critics are Luella Miner (No. 33), anon-
ymous correspondent of the Literary Digest (No. 56), C. C. Hyde (No.
165), R. W. Bruére (No. 170), F. C. Howe (No. 173), F. H. Rindge,
Jr. (No. 174), R. B. Fosdick (No. 175), Theodore Roosevelt (No.
176), R. H. Davis (No. 177), John Masefield (No. 179), H. S. Canby
(No. 181), E. L. James (No. 185), Katherine Mayo (No. 186), Albert
Kinross (No. 188), J. S. Bassett (No. 192), Zechariah Chafee, Jr. (No.
194). Critics in particular of art and literature comprise Bok (No.
135), Mumford (No. 137), Page (No. 133), Boynton (No. 147), and
Van Doren (No. 148).
OBSERVERS ON ECONOMICS AND FINANCE are Dawes (No. 70),
McAdoo (No. 69), Olsen (No. 72), Carrick (No. 73), Young (No. 208),
Howland (No. 74), Newell (No. 75), Greeley (No. 76), and Smith (No.
79).
—o
6. Classifcation of Selections on the World War
PARTICIPANTS. Reports and reminiscences of participants have
been taken out of F. C. Howe (No. 173), F. H. Rindge, Jr., (No. 174),
R. H. Davis (No. 177), Colonel Hiram Bingham (No. 183). Eye-
witnesses have given invaluable accounts of important events, par-
No. 6] Classification of Selections on the World War 13
ticularly W. H. Page (No. 166), Katherine Mayo (No. 186), Albert
Kinross (No. 188).
Post-BELLUM WRITINGS on similar subjects, as they came up after
the War, include Eliot (No. 206), Ward (No. 22), Lowry (No. 124),
Shepherd (No. 44), Munro (No. 93), Bassett (No. 197), Abbott (No.
199), Lawrence (No. 202), Hudson (No. 203), and Phillips (No. 205).
OBSERVERS IN THE FIELD. From observers, correspondents, and
critics of the World War have been selected: Roosevelt (No. 176),
Hyde (No. 165), Bruére (No. 170), Page (No. 166), Grattan (No. 167),
Canby (No. 181), Bingham (No. 183), James (No. 185), Fosdick
(No. 175), Rindge (No. 174), Chafee (No. 194), Howe (No. 173),
Ogg (No. 88), and Keough (No. 140).
PAR TE
THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE
CHAPTER IIT— POPULATION AND
DISTRIBUTION
7. A Traveler at the Opening of the Century (1900)
BY JAMES FULLARTON MUIRHEAD
Muirhead, an Englishman, lived some two years in the United States about
the time this was written. Engaged in gathering material for the Baedeker Guide
to the United States, he traveled widely and had an opportunity to view the en-
tire country with the unprejudiced eyes of a stranger.—For similar general ac-
counts of the state of the country, see Mark Sullivan, Our Times, the United States
[1900-1925]; Frederic Austin Ogg, National Progress, 1907-1917 [American Nation,
vol. XXVII]; Charles Austin Beard, Contemporary American History, 1887-1913;
E. B. Andrews, The United States in Recent Times; Albert Perry Brigham, United
States of America; and such periodicals as World’s Work, Century, Review of Reviews,
and Outlook for appropriate years; American Year Book, for years 1910-1920,
1925.
EXT to the interest and beauty of the places to be visited,
perhaps the two things in which a visitor to a new country
has most concern are the means of moving from point to point and
the accommodation provided for him at his nightly stopping-places—
in brief, its conveyances and its inns. During the year or more I
spent in almost continuous traveling in the United States I had
abundant opportunity of testing both of these. In all I must have
slept in over two hundred different beds, ranging from one in a hotel-
chamber so gorgeous that it seemed almost as indelicate to go to bed
in it as to undress in the drawing-room, down through the berths
of Pullman cars and river steamboats, to an open air couch of balsam
boughs in the Adirondack forests. My means of locomotion included
a safety bicycle, an Adirondack canoe, the back of a horse, the omni-
I4
No.7] A Traveler at the Opening of the Century I5
present buggy, a bob-sleigh, a “cutter,” a “booby,” four-horse
“stages,” river, lake and sea-going steamers, horse-cars, cable-cars,
electric cars, mountain elevators, narrow-gauge railways, and the
Vestibuled Limited Express from New York to Chicago.
Perhaps it is significant of the amount of truth in many of the
assertions made about traveling in the United States that I traversed
about 35,000 miles in the various ways indicated above without a
scratch and almost without serious detention or delay. Once we
were nearly swamped in a sudden squall in a mountain lake, and once
we had a minute or two’s unpleasant experience of the iron-shod
heels of our horse inside the buggy, the unfortunate animal having
hitched his hind-legs over the dash-board and nearly kicking out our
brains in his frantic efforts to get free. These, however, were acci-
dents that might have happened anywhere, and if my experiences
by road and rail in America prove anything, they prove that traveling
in the United States is just as safe as in Europe. Some varieties of
it are rougher than anything of the kind I know in the Old World;
but on the other hand much of it is far pleasanter. The European
system of small railway compartments, in spite of its advantage of
privacy and quiet, would be simply unendurable in the long journeys
that have to be made in the western hemisphere. The journey of
twenty-four to thirty hours from New York to Chicago, if made by
the Vestibuled Limited, is probably less fatiguing than the day-
journey of half the time from London to Edinburgh. The comforts
of this superb train include those of the drawing-room, the dining-
room, the smoking-room, and the library. These apartments are
perfectly ventilated by compressed air and lighted by movable electric
lights, while in winter they are warmed to an agreeable temperature
by steam-pipes. Card-tables and a selection of the daily papers
minister to the traveler’s amusement, while bulletin boards give the
latest Stock Exchange quotations and the reports of the Government
Weather Bureau. Those who desire it may enjoy a bath en route,
or avail themselves of the services of a lady’s maid, a barber, a sten-
ographer, and a type-writer. There is even a small and carefully
selected medicine chest within reach; and the way in which the minor
delicacies of life are consulted may be illustrated by the fact that
powdered soap is provided in the lavatories, so that no one may
have to use the same cake of soap as his neighbor.
16 Population and Distribution [1900
No one who has not tried both can appreciate the immense difference
in comfort given by the opportunity to move about in the train. No
matter how pleasant one’s companions are in an English first-class
compartment, their enforced proximity makes one heartily sick of
them before many hours have elapsed; while a conversation with
Daisy Miller in the American parlour car is rendered doubly delightful
by the consciousness that you may at any moment transfer yourself
and your bons mots to Lydia Blood at the other end of the car, or
retire with Gilead P. Beck to the snug little smoking-room. The
great size and weight of the American cars make them very steady
on well-laid tracks like those of the Pennsylvania Railway, and thus
letter-writing need not be a lost art on a railway journey. Even
when the permanent way is inferior, the same cause often makes the
vibration less than on the admirable road-beds of England... .
Travelers who prefer the privacy of the European system may
combine it with the liberty of the American system by hiring, at a
small extra rate, the so-called “drawing-room” or “state-room,” a
small compartment containing four seats or berths, divided by parti-
tions from the rest of the parlour car. The ordinary carriage or “day
coach” corresponds to the English second-class carriage, or, rather,
to the excellent third-class carriages on such railways as the Midland.
It does not, I think, excel them in comfort except in the greater size,
the greater liberty of motion, and the element of variety afforded by
the greater number of fellow-passengers. The seats are disposed on
each side of a narrow central aisle, and are so arranged that the oc-
cupants can ride forward or backward as they prefer. Each seat holds
two persons, but with some difficulty if either has any amplitude of
bulk. The space for the legs is also very limited. . . . The windows
are another weak point. They move vertically as ours do, but up
instead of down; and they are frequently made so that they cannot
be opened more than a few inches. The handles by which they are
lifted are very small, and afford very little purchase; and the windows
are frequently so stiff that it requires a strong man to move them. I
have often seen half a dozen passengers struggle in vain with a re-
fractory glass, and finally have to call in the help of the brawny brake-
man. . . . The windows are all furnished with small slatted blinds,
which can be arranged in hot weather so as to exclude the sun and let
in the air. . . . At intervals the brakeman carries round a pitcher of
No.7] A Traveler at the Opening of the Century 17
iced water, which he serves gratis to all who want it; and it is a pleas-
ant sight on sultry summer days to see how the children welcome his
coming. In some cases there is a permanent filter of ice-water with a
tap in a corner of the car. At each end of the car is a lavatory, one
for men and one for women. In spite, then, of the discomforts noted
above, it may be asserted that the poor man is more comfortable on a
long journey than in Europe; and that ona short journey the American
system affords more entertainment than the European. .. .
A feature connected with the American railway system that should
not be overlooked is the mass of literature prepared by the railway
companies and distributed gratis to their passengers. The illustrated
pamphlets issued by the larger companies are marvels of paper and
typography, with really charming illustrations and a text that is often
clever and witty enough to suggest that authors of repute are some-
times tempted to lend their anonymous pens for this kind of work.
But even the tiniest little “one-horse”’ railway distributes neat little
“folders,” showing conclusively that its tracks lead through the
Elysian Fields and end at the Garden of Eden. A conspicuous feature
in all hotel offices is a large rack containing packages of these gaily
coloured folders, contributed by perhaps fifty different railways for
the use of the hotel guests. . .
The United States is proverbially the paradise of what it is, perhaps,
now behind the times to term the gentler sex. The path of woman,
old or new, in America is made smooth in all directions, and as a rule
she has the best of the accommodation and the lion’s share of the at-
tention wherever she goes. But this is emphatically not the case on
the parlour car. No attempt is made there to divide the sexes or to
respect the privacy of a lady. If there are twelve men and four women
on the car, the latter are not grouped by themselves, but are scattered
among the men, either in lower or upper berths, as the number of
their tickets or the courtesy of the men dictates. The lavatory and
dressing-room for men at one end of the car has two or more “set
bowls” (fixed in basins), and can be used by several dressers at once.
The parallel accommodation for ladies barely holds one, and its door
is provided with a lock, which enables a selfish bang-frizzler and
rouge-layer to occupy it for an hour while a queue of her unhappy
sisters remains outside. It is difficult to see why a small portion
at one end of the car should not be reserved for ladies, and sepat-
1d Population and Distribution [1900
ated at night from the rest of the car by a curtain across the central
aisles ns-
The speed of American trains is as a rule slower than that of English
ones, though there are some brilliant exceptions to this rule. I never
remember dawdling along in so slow and apparently purposeless a
manner as in crossing the arid deserts of Arizona—unless, indeed, it
was in traveling by the Manchester and Milford line in Wales. The
train on the branch between Raymond (a starting point for the Yose-
mite) and the main line went so cannily that the engine-driver (an
excellent marksman) shot rabbits from the engine, while the fireman
jumped down, picked them up, and clambered on again at the end of
the train. The only time the train had to be stopped for him was
when the engineer had a successful right and left, the victims of which
expired at some distance from each other. It should be said that
there was absolutely no reason to hurry on this trip, as we had “‘lash-
ins” of time to spare for our connection at the junction, and the pas-
sengers were all much interested in the sport. . . .
Coaching in America is, as a rule, anything but a pleasure. It is
true that the chance of being held up by “road agents” is to-day
practically non-existent, and that the spectacle of a crowd of yelling
Apaches making a stage-coach the pin-cushion for their arrows is now
to be seen nowhere but in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. But the
roads! . . . Even in the State of New York I have been in a stage that
was temporarily checked by a hole two feet deep in the centre of the
road, and that had to be emptied and held up while passing another
part of the same road. In Virginia I drove over a road, leading to
one of the most frequented resorts of the State, which it is simple
truth to state offered worse going than any ordinary ploughed field.
The wheels were often almost entirely submerged in liquid mud, and
it is still a mystery to me how the tackle held together. To be jolted
off one’s seat so violently as to strike the top of the carriage was not a
unique experience. Nor was the spending of ten hours in making
thirty miles with four horses. In the Yellowstone one of the coaches
of our party settled down in the midst of a slough of despond on the
highway, from which it was finally extricated backwards by the com-
bined efforts of twelve horses borrowed from the other coaches. Mis-
ery makes strange bedfellows, and the ingredients of a Christmas
pudding are not more thoroughly shaken together or more inextric-
No.7] A Traveler at the Opening of the Century 19
ably mingled than stage-coach passengers in America are apt to be.
The difficulties of the roads have developed the skill, courage, and
readiness of the stage-coach men to an extraordinary degree, and I
have never seen bolder or more dexterous driving than when Cali-
fornia Bill or Colorado Jack rushed his team of four young horses
down the breakneck slopes of these terrible highways. After one
particularly hair-raising descent the driver condescended to explain
that he was afraid to come down more slowly, lest the hind wheels
should skid on the smooth rocky outcrop in the road and swing the
vehicle sideways into the abyss. In coming out of the Yosemite,
owing to some disturbance of the ordinary traffic arrangements our
coach met the incoming stage at a part of the road so narrow that it
seemed absolutely impossible for the two to pass each other. On the
one side was a yawning precipice, on the other the mountain rose
steeply from the roadside. The off-wheels of the incoming coach were
ulted up on the hillside as far as they could be without an upset. In
vain; our hubs still locked. We were then allowed to dismount. Our
coach was backed down for fifty yards or so. Small heaps of stone
were piled opposite the hubs of the stationary coach. Our driver
whipped his horses to a gallop, ran his near-wheels over these stones
so that their hubs were raised above those of the near-wheels of the
other coach, and successfully made the dare-devil passage, in which
he had not more than a couple of inches’ margin to save him from pre-
cipitation into eternity. I hardly knew which to admire most—the
ingenuity which thus made good in altitude what it lacked in latitude,
or the phlegm with which the occupants of the other coach retained
their seats throughout the entire episode. .
The transition from traveling facilities to the telegraphic and postal
services is natural. The telegraphs of the United States are not in
the hands of the government, but are controlled by private companies,
of which the Western Union, with its headquarters in New York, is
facile princeps. This company possesses the largest telegraph system
in the world, having 21,000 offices and 750,000 miles of wire. It also
leases or uses seven Atlantic cables. In this, however, as in many
other cases, size does not necessarily connote quality. ...
The postal service also struck me as on the whole less prompt and
accurate than that of Great Britain. The comparative infrequency
of fully equipped post-offices is certainly an inconvenience. . . .
(20 Population and Distribution [1900
No remarks on the possible inferiority of the American telegrapb
and postal systems would be fair if unaccompanied by a tribute to the
wonderful development of the use of the telephone. New York has
(or had very recently) more than twice as many subscribers to the
telephonic exchanges as London, and some American towns possess
one telephone for every twenty inhabitants, while the ratio in the
British metropolis is 1:3,000. . . .
The generalisations made in travelers’ books about the hotels of
America seem to me as fallacious as most of the generalisations about
this chameleon among nations. Some of the American hotels I stayed
at were about the best of their kind in the world, others about the
worst, others again about half-way between these extremes. On the
whole, I liked the so-called “American system” of an inclusive price
by the day, covering everything except such purely voluntary extras as
wine; and it seems to me that an ideal hotel on this system would leave
very little to wish for. The large American way of looking at things
makes a man prefer to give twenty shillings per day for all he needs and
consumes rather than be bothered with a bill for sixteen to seventeen
shillings, including such items (not disdained even by the swellest Euro-
pean hotels) as one penny for stationery or a shilling for lights. ...
In houses on the American system the price generally varies
according to the style of room selected; but most of the inconvenience
of a bedchamber near the top of the house is obviated by the universal
service of easy-running “elevators” or lifts. (By the way, the per-
sistent manner in which the elevators are used on all occasions is
often amusing. An American lady who has some twenty shallow
steps to descend to the ground floor will rather wait patiently five
minutes for the elevator than walk downstairs.)
Traveler’s tales as to the system of “tipping” in American hotels
differ widely. The truth is probably as far from the indignant Briton’s
assertion, based probably on one flagrant instance in New York,
that “it is ten times worse than in England and tantamount to
robbery with violence,” as from the patriotic American’s assurance
that “The thing, sir, is absolutely unknown in our free and enlight-
ened country; no American citizen would demean himself to accept
a gratuity.” To judge from my own experience, I should say that
the practice was quite as common in such cities as Boston, New
York, and Philadelphia as in Europe, and more onerous because the
No.7] A Traveler at the Opening of the Century 2I
amounts expected are larger. A dollar goes no farther than a shilling.
Moreover, the gratuity is usually given in the form of “refreshers”
from day to day, so that the vengeance of the disappointed is less
easily evaded. ...
Wine or beer is much less frequently drunk at meals than in Europe,
though the amount of alcoholic liquor seen on the tables of a hotel
would be a very misleading measure of the amount consumed. The
men have a curious habit of flocking to the bar-room immediately
after dinner to imbibe the stimulant that preference, or custom, or
the fear of their wives has deprived them of during the meal. Wine
is generally poor and dear. The mixed drinks at the bar are fascinating
and probably very indigestible. . . .
The real national beverage is, however, ice-water. Of this I have
little more to say than to warn the British visitor to suspend his
judgment until he has been some time in the country. I certainly
was not prejudiced in favour of this chilly draught when I started
for the United States, but I soon came to find it natural and even
necessary, and as much so from the dry hot air of the stove-heated
room in winter as from the natural ambition of the mercury in summer.
The habit so easily formed was as uneasily unlearned when I returned
to civilisation. On the whole, it may be philosophic to conclude that
a universal habit in any country has some solid if cryptic reason for
its existence, and to surmise that the drinking of ice-water is not
so deadly in the States as it might be elsewhere. It certainly is
universal enough. When you ring a bell or look at a waiter, ice-water
is immediately brought to you. Each meal is started with a full
tumbler of that fluid, and the observant darkey rarely allows the tide
to ebb until the meal is concluded. Ice-water is provided gratui-
tously and copiously on trains, in waiting-rooms, even sometimes in
the public fountains. If, finally, I were asked to name the character-
istic sound of the United States, which would tell you of your where-
abouts if transported to America in an instant of time, it would be
the musical tinkle of the ice in the small white pitchers that the
bell-boys in hotels seem perennially carrying along all the corridors,
day and night, year in and year out.
James Fullarton Muirhead, America: The Land of Contrasts: A Briton’s View of
his American Kin (London and New York, John Lane, 3rd ed., 1902), 221-272
passim. Reprinted by permission of the author.
22 Population and Distribution [1912
8. Rural Conveniences (1912)
BY PROFESSOR HERBERT EVERETT VAN NORMAN
Van Norman was, at the time of writing, Professor of Dairy Husbandry at
Pennsylvania State College. He has held many official positions in agricultural
institutions; published First Lesson in Dairying (1908) and many articles, bulletins,
etc., on dairying and agricultural subjects.—For material on farm life, see such
periodicals as Country Gentleman, Rural New-Yorker, and Successful Farming. For
more detailed accounts of particular rural conveniences, see No. 63 below on Rural
Free Delivery; No. 65 on Automobiles; and No. 159 on Telephones.
OR many years a serious problem, receiving the consideration
of the student of rural problems was the drift from country to
city and the causes which underlay it. Gradually conditions are
changing and there is a decided movement toward the country.
Careful analysis of the situation suggests that a large factor in the
changed condition and increased interest in country life is the develop-
ment of rural conveniences which make country living more enjoyable,
not to emphasize their importance as commercial factors. The per-
fection and wide introduction of the telephone, rural delivery and
interurban electric railway are revolutionizing the sentiment in many
communities and are making marked changes in every community
where they have been introduced. . . .
Business appointments, social appointments, discussions of social
and church plans, to say nothing of the mere friendly exchange of
greeting over the telephone have probably compensated every owner
of a rural telephone many times over for the expense of it if all business
advantages were ignored.
In spite of the fact that on some rural lines there are from three to
twenty ’phones, many of which are called into play in response to a
summons which only demands one answer, the subscriber would not be
without its convenience because of its lack of privacy. At some seasons
of the year the general summons to the ’phone gives notice that central
is ready to report the weather bureau’s prognostication for the follow-
ing day. When haying and harvest or late seeding are in progress the
notice of a probable change in the weather may mean the saving of
part or all of a crop that would otherwise have been lost.
The rural delivery of mail has stimulated correspondence between
friends and family. The certainty that the letter if written will reach
No. 8] Rural Conveniences 23
the postoffice at the latest within twenty-four hours and that the
answer will be delivered to the door even though every member of the
family is too busy to go to the postoffice, makes for a sense of near-
ness which can hardly be realized unless one has experienced the sense
of isolation when six or seven miles from the postoffice and “too busy
to go for the mail.” The business advantage resulting from a quick
communication with the merchant and factory is again a factor the
value of which statistics do not report. To know that the letter mailed
to-day will reach its destination on the morrow in time for necessary
repairs to be shipped on the express is an economic advantage which
is having a desirable influence. The increase in the circulation of
city dailies, agricultural weeklies and innumerable monthly magazines,
social, religious and literary, has been very great. In no place is the
truth of the saying “that the more one has the more one wants”
greater than in the increasing use of reading matter because of rural
delivery.
The regularity of market reports with its resulting closer under-
standing of market conditions and better judgment as to when to
sell are only incidents of the conveniences that rural mail service
affords. This usefulness will be added to immeasurably when the
nation inaugurates a parcel post that will make possible the quick
exchange of moderate sized packages between country and city at
a moderate cost and with the promptness now possible in the exchange
of written communications.
The interurban car line connecting the country and the town has
both a commercial and a social influence in a community. To know
that one has only to dress and “be ready for the 7.05 car” in order
to attend a social function, a church gathering, an instructive lecture
or an evening entertainment or other recreation and finish in time
to catch the last car for home is conducive to rural contentment.
To be free from the necessity of hitching up the horse by the light of
a lantern before one dresses for the evening function; to know that one
enters a social circle with the atmosphere of the house rather than of
the stable; to know that after the evening pleasure is over horse and
rig will not have to be cared for, and to know that a spirited horse is
not standing out exposed to weather, even with a blanket on, while
his owner listens to the lecture increases very materially the attractive-
ness of the evening diversion. This is especially true if in weighing
24 Population and Distribution [ror2
the attractions and disadvantages early rising on the morrow is one
of the drawbacks to the evening’s social or educational event... .
Increasingly, the interurban car is becoming a systematic means of
marketing products. Hundreds of thousands of gallons of milk, cream
and packages of butter are regularly shipped from the farm gate to the
city distributor or consumer. Market garden products, live and
dressed poultry, eggs, dressed pork and mutton are all handled on
many interurban lines. In some fruit sections four and five cars may
be seen standing on the siding being loaded with fruit at a station
where there is not a farm building in sight. Seven o’clock the following
morning will find these products in the great markets of the city,
fifty, sixty or even a hundred miles away. When car load shipments
justify it the private siding for loading of hay, grain and other bulky
crops may be secured at the individual farm.
The delivery of morning and evening papers in a territory not sup-
plied by rural mail is often accomplished by means of the interurban
car.
The automobile, by some considered a luxury, is in many sections
rapidly becoming an economic factor of no small importance. The
actual time saved in the delivery of milk and cream to the creamery
or shipping station or the delivery of other perishable farm products;
the quick securing of repairs; the rapid movement of farm labor
from one job to another; the reduced time necessary to be absent from
the farm work in order to transact business in town and get back are
matters of vital importance, independent of any sentiment. The
pleasure and contentment of the family which the automobile makes
possible because of the evening automobile ride for diversion or the
exchange of social courtesies and the attendance upon meetings of
various kinds is not to be overlooked. The great distance that may
be covered, at the same time the fact that the evening pleasure with
the automobile does not lessen the efficiency of the farm motive
power on the following day, as is the case when the farm team must
be hitched into the pleasure vehicle, is a factor which the student of
farm conditions should not overlook. From a half to an hour’s
distance from railroad, church and social activities is the maximum
desirable limit for a farm home. With the ordinary team and convey-
ances this restricts the distance to not over six or seven miles. With
the automobile this may be increased to from nine to twelve miles
No. 9] A Chinese View of American Manners 25
and yet the farmer will feel nearer to town and his neighbors because
of his automobile than he did with his horse-drawn vehicle.
The perfection and reliability of the automobile is rapidly introduc-
ing into the rural life problem a new factor in the personnel of the city
business man who finds that the thirty to fifty minutes trip from
home to office daily will, when taken in his automobile, permit him
to live in the country where his children may have country air and
freedom, and where he can forget city business problems in an effort
to develop plant and animal life, whether it takes the form of generous
lawns and gardens or a systematic farm business.
The influence of this transplanted city dweller on the social life,
the labor problem and the farm practice of his new environment are
subjects for study which the automobile and the interurban electric
car have largely made possible. Probably no one factor has been a
greater stimulus to the development of country roads with their
economic importance in the movement of farm products aside from
pleasure than has the rural and city-owned automobile.
Aside from questions of relative remuneration, social intercourse
and educational opportunities, it is the conveniences made possible by
the telephone, rural mail deliveries, interurban car line and automobile
that are the greatest factors in the rapidly changing rural and urban
sentiment toward farm life, and are hastening the day when the success-
ful farmer will be recognized as of the true aristocracy of the nation.
H. E. Van Norman, in Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social
Science (Philadelphia, March, 1912), XL, 163-167 passim.
n
g. A Chinese View of American Manners (1914)
BY MINISTER WU TING-FANG
Wu Ting-Fang was Chinese Minister to the United States 1897-1902, and 1907-
1909. Notably distinguished for his wit and social grace, he viewed American
peculiarities with tolerance and interest.
UCH has been written and more said about American manners,
I or, rather, the American lack of manners. Americans have
frequently been criticized for their bad breeding, and many sarcastic
references to American deportment have been made in my presence.
20 Population and Distribution [1914
I have even been told (I do not know how true it is) that European
diplomats dislike being stationed in America, because of their aver-
sion to the American way of doing things.
Much, too, has been written and said about Chinese manners, not
only by foreigners, but also by Chinese. One of the classics which
our youth have to know by heart is devoted almost entirely to man-
ners. There has also been much adverse criticism of our manners or
our excess of manners, though I have never heard that any diplo-
mats have, on this account, objected to being sent to China. We
Chinese are, therefore, in the same boat as the Americans. In regard
to manners, neither of us finds much favor with foreigners, though for
diametrically opposite reasons; the Americans are accused of observ-
ing too few formalities, and we of observing too many.
The Americans are direct and straightforward. They will tell you
to your face that they like you, and occasionally they also have very
little hesitation in telling you that they do not like you. They say
frankly just what they think. It is immaterial to them that their
remarks are personal, perhaps uncomplimentary.
The directness of Americans is seen not only in what they say, but
in the way they say it. They come directly to the point, without
much preface or introduction; much less is there any circumlocution
or “beating about the bush.” When they come to see you they say
their say and then take their departure; moreover, they say it in the
most terse, concise, and unambiguous manner. In this respect what
a contrast they are to us! We always approach one another with pre-
liminary greetings. Then we talk of the weather, of politics or friends
—of anything, in fact, which is as far as possible from the object of
the visit. Only after this introduction do we broach the subject
uppermost in our minds, and throughout the conversation polite
courtesies are exchanged whenever the opportunity arises. These
elaborate preludes and interludes may, to the strenuous, ever-in-a-
hurry American, seem useless and superfluous, but they serve a good
purpose. Like the common courtesies and civilities of life, they pave
the way for the speakers, especially if they are strangers; they improve
their tempers and place them generally on terms of mutual under-
standing. It is said that some years ago a foreign consul in China,
having a serious complaint to make on behalf of his nation, called on
the Taotai, the highest local authority in the port. He found the
No. 9] A Chinese View of American Manners Ai
Chinese official so genial and polite that after half an hour’s conver-
sation he advised the complainant to settle the trouble amicably with-
out bothering the Chinese officials about the matter. A good deal
may be said on behalf of both systems. The American practice has
at least the merit of saving time, an all-important object with the
American people. When we recall that this remarkable nation will
spend millions of dollars to build a tunnel under a river or to shorten
a curve in a railroad, merely that they may save two or three minutes,
we are not surprised at the abruptness of their speech.
Americans act up to their Declaration of Independence, especially
the principle it enunciates concerning the equality of man. They lay
so much importance of this that they do not confine its application to
social intercourse. In fact, I think this doctrine is the basis of the so-
called American manners. All men are deemed socially equal, whether
as friend and friend, as President and citizen, as employer and em-
ployee, as master and servant, or as parent and child. Their rela-
tionship may be such that one is entitled to demand, and the other to
render, certain acts of obedience and a certain amount of respect, but
outside that they are on the same level... .
The youth of America have not unnaturally caught the spirit of
their elders, so that even children consider themselves almost on a par
with their parents, while the parents, on the other hand, also treat
them as if they were equals, and allow them the utmost freedom.
While a Chinese child renders unquestioning obedience to his parents’
orders, such obedience as a soldier yields to his superior officer, the
American child must have the whys and the wherefores duly explained
to him, and the reason for his obedience made clear. It is not his
parent that he obeys, but expediency and the dictates of reason. Here
we see the clear-headed, sound, common-sense business man in the
making. The early training of the boy has laid the foundation for the
future man... ...
Even the domestic servant does not lose this precious American
heritage of equality. I have nothing to say against that worthy
individual, the American servant (if one can be found). On the
contrary, none is more faithful or more efficient. But in some respects
he is unique among the servants of the world. He does not see that
there is any inequality between him and his master. His master—or
should I say his employer?—pays him certain wages to do certain
28 Population and Distribution [r914
work, and he does it, but outside the bounds of this contract they
are still man and man, citizen and citizen.
We of the Old World are accustomed to regard domestic service as
a profession in which the members work for advancement, without
much thought of ever changing their position. A few clever persons
may ultimately adopt another profession and, according to our
antiquated, conservative ways of thinking, rise higher in the social
scale, but for the large majority the dignity of a butler or a house-
keeper is the height of their ambition, the crowning-point in their
career. Not so the American servant. Strictly speaking, there are
no servants in America. The man or the woman, as the case may be,
who happens for the moment to be your servant is only servant for
the time being. He has no intention of making domestic service his
profession, of being a servant for the whole of his life. To be subject
to the will of others, even in the small degree to which American
servants are subordinate, is offensive to an American’s pride of
citizenship; it is contrary to his conception of American equality.
He is a servant only for the time and until he finds something better
to do. He accepts a menial position only as a stepping-stone to some
more independent employment. Isit to be wondered at that American
servants have manners different from their brethren in other coun-
tries? When foreigners find that American servants are not like
servants in their own country, they should not resent their behavior.
It does not denote disrespect, it is merely the outcrop of their natural
independence and aspirations. .. .
Few people are more warm-hearted, genial, and sociable than the
Americans. I do not dwell on this, because it is quite unnecessary.
The fact is perfectly familiar to all who have the slightest knowledge
of them. Their kindness and warmth to strangers are particularly
pleasant, and are appreciated by their visitors. In some other coun-
tries the people, though not unsociable, surround themselves with
so much reserve that strangers are at first chilled and repulsed,
although there are no pleasanter or more hospitable persons anywhere
to be found when once you have broken the ice and learned to know
them; but it is the stranger who must make the first advances, for
they themselves will make no effort to become acquainted, and their
manner is such as to discourage any efforts on the part of the visitor.
You may travel with them for hours in the same car, sit opposite to
No. 10] Hyphenated Americanism 29
them, and all the while they will shelter themselves behind a news-
paper, the broad sheets of which effectively prohibit any attempts at
closer acquaintance. ...
How different are the manners of an American! You can hardly
take a walk or go for any distance in a train without being addressed
by a stranger, and not infrequently making a friend. In some coun-
tries the fact that you are a foreigner only thickens the ice; in America
it thaws it. This delightful trait in the American character is also
traceable to the same cause as that which has helped us to explain
the other peculiarities which have been mentioned. To good Ameri-
cans not only are the citizens of America born equal, but the citizens
of the world are also born equal.
Wu Ting-Fang, American Dinners and American Manners, in Harper’s Magazine,
March, 1914 (New York), 526-533 passim.
ro. Hyphenated Americanism (1916)
BY EX-PRESIDENT THEODORE ROOSEVELT
This is a kind of essay on patriotism and national spirit, in Roosevelt’s charac-
teristic style—For Roosevelt see Nos. 23-26 below.
E must recognize that it is a cardinal sin against democracy
to support a man for public office because he belongs to a given
creed or to oppose him because he belongs to a given creed. It is just
as evil as to draw the line between class and class, between occupation
and occupation in political life. No man who tries to draw either line
is a good American. True Americanism demands that we judge each
man on his conduct, that we so judge him in public life. The line of
cleavage drawn on principle and conduct in public affairs is never in
any healthy community identical with the line of cleavage between
creed and creed or between class and class. On the contrary, where
the community life is healthy, these lines of cleavage almost always run
nearly at right angles to one another. It is eminently necessary to all
of us that we should have able and honest public officials in the nation,
in the city, in the state. If we make a serious and resolute effort to
30 Population and Distribution [1916
get such officials of the right kind, men who shall not only be honest
but shall be able and shall take the right view of public questions, we
will find as a matter of fact that the men we thus choose will be drawn
from the professors of every creed and from among men who do not
adhere to any creed.
For thirty-five years I have been more or less actively engaged in
public life, in the performance of my political duties, now in a public
position, now in a private position. I have fought with all the fervor
I possessed for the various causes in which with all my heart I be-
lieved; and in every fight I thus made I have had with me and against
me Catholics, Protestants and Jews. There have been times when I
have had to make the fight for or against some man of each creed on
grounds of plain public morality, unconnected with questions of pub-
lic policy. There were other times when I have made such a fight for
or against a given man, not on grounds of public morality, for he may
have been morally a good man, but on account of his attitude on ques-
tions of public policy, of governmental principle. In both cases, I
have always found myself fighting beside, and fighting against, men of
every creed. The one sure way to have secured the defeat of every
good principle worth fighting for would have been to have permitted
the fight to be changed into one along sectarian lines and inspired by
the spirit of sectarian bitterness, either for the purpose of putting into
public life or of keeping out of public life the believers in any given
creed. Such conduct represents an assault upon Americanism. The
man guilty of it is not a good American.
I hold that in this country there must be complete severance of
Church and State; that public moneys shall not be used for the pur-
pose of advancing any particular creed; and therefore that the public
schools shall be non-sectarian and no public moneys appropriated for
sectarian schools. Asa necessary corollary to this, not only the pupils
but the members of the teaching force and the school officials of all
kinds must be treated exactly on a par, no matter what their creed;
and there must be no more discrimination against Jew or Catholic or
Protestant than discrimination in favor of Jew, Catholic or Protestant.
Whoever makes such discrimination is an enemy of the public schools.
What is true of creed is no less true of nationality. There is no room
in this country for hyphenated Americans. When I refer to hyphe-
nated Americanism, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of
No. 10] Hyphenated Americanism 31
the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Ameri-
cans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an
American at all. This is just as true of the man who puts “native”
before the hyphen as of the man who puts German or Irish or English
or French before the hyphen. Americanism is a matter of the spirit
and of the soul. Our allegiance must be purely to the United States.
We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other alle-
giance. But if he is heartily and singly loyal to this Republic, then
no matter where he was born, he is just as good an American as any
one elses 32).
When in 1909 our battle fleet returned from its voyage around the
world, Admirals Wainwright and Schroeder represented the best tra-
ditions and the most efficient action in our navy; one was of old Ameri-
can blood and of English descent; the other was the son of German
immigrants. But one was not a native-American and the other a
German-American. Each was an American pure and simple. Each
bore allegiance only to the flag of the United States. Each would have
been incapable of considering the interests of Germany or of England
or of any other country except the United States. ...
For an American citizen to vote as a German-American, an Irish-
American or an English-American is to be a traitor to American insti-
tutions; and those hyphenated Americans who terrorize Americar
politicians by threats of the foreign vote are engaged in treason to the
American Republic.
Now this is a declaration of principles. How are we in practical
fashion to secure the making of these principles part of the very fiber
of our national life? First and foremost let us all resolve that in this
country hereafter we shall place far less emphasis upon the question of
right and much greater emphasis upon the matter of duty. A republic
can’t succeed and won’t succeed in the tremendous international
stress of the modern world unless its citizens possess that form of high-
minded patriotism which consists of individual rights. . . .
We should meet this situation by on the one hand seeing that
these immigrants get all their rights as American citizens, and on
the other hand insisting that they live up to their duties as American
citizens. Any discrimination against aliens is a wrong, for it tends
to put the immigrant at a disadvantage and to cause him to feel
bitterness and resentment during the very years when he should be
32 Population and Distribution [1916
preparing himself for American citizenship. If an immigrant is not
fit to become a citizen, he should not be allowed to come here. If
he is fit, he should be given all the rights to earn his own livelihnod,
and to better himself, that any man can have. Take such a matter
as the illiteracy test; I entirely agree with those who feel that many
very excellent possible citizens would be barred improperly by an illit-
eracy test. But why do you not admit aliens under a bond to learn
to read and write English within a certain time? It would then be a
duty to see that they were given ample opportunity to learn to read
and write and that they were deported if they failed to take advantage
of the opportunity. No man can be a good citizen if he is not at
least in process of learning to speak the language of his fellow-citizens.
And an alien who remains here without learning to speak English
for more than a certain number of years should at the end of that
time be treated as having refused to take the preliminary steps
necessary to complete Americanization and should be deported. But
there should be no denial or limitation of the alien’s opportunity to
work, to own property and to take advantage of civic opportunities.
Special legislation should deal with the aliens who do not come here
to be made citizens. But the alien who comes here intending to
become a citizen should be helped in every way to advance himself,
should be removed from every possible disadvantage and in return
should be required under penalty of being sent back to the country
from which he came, to prove that he is in good faith fitting himself
to be an American citizen. We should set a high standard and insist
on men reaching it; but if they do reach it we should treat them as
on a full equality with ourselves.
From Fear God and Take Your Own Part, by Theodore Roosevelt (copyright
1916, George H. Doran Company), 359-370 passim.
ae
No. 11] The Flapper: A National Institution 33
11. The Flapper: A National Institution (1926)
BY SAMUEL CROWTHER
Crowther is a journalist who has written on a wide variety of subjects, most of
them with an economic slant——Bibliography: Harold U. Faulkner, American
Economic History; Garet Garrett, The American Omen; and frequent popular
articles in Collier’s Weekly and The Saturday Evening Post.
T was not so long ago that going to a bootblack was an extrava-
gance—fool-and-his-money affair, or diversion of improvident
traveling salesmen. Then shines were five cents. To-day they are
ten, and we take them as a matter of course.
During the past several months I have traveled from coast to
coast and from Fargo, N. D., to El Paso, Tex.—through all the
states and in all the cities and many of the towns. I did not find a
town of over two thousand—and I doubt if there is one—where
Jeanette or Lucille or Marie is not running a “beauty parlor” or a
“beauty shoppe” and doing fairly well. In Sioux Falls, S. D., I
counted three in two blocks—and Sioux Falls is supposed to be broke.
Polishing shoes and polishing hands and faces have become great
industries, earning many millions a year. In a small Middle West
city I saw, in the wholesale district, a store devoted entirely to selling
beauty-parlor aprons. Every fair-sized city has its “beauty school”
and also you can learn by mail.
But why bother about such trivialities as shining shoes and steaming
faces—does not this just go to show that the males are growing laxer
and the females more vain? It means a lot more.
It means more than the figures any statistician might assemble—
it means that we to-day are rich enough to go in for luxuries not just
in the big cities but everywhere in our land. It means that we are
all rich in a way, for there are not enough of the really rich to keep
so many places going.
Consider the flapper and how she grows. I was not on a flapper
hunt; my primary purpose was to see what was going on in this coun-
try. I had heard many doleful tales—we were riding to a fall; our
people were not working but demanding extravagant wages for going
through the motions of work; money was being spent and not saved;
numerous homely virtues of our forefathers had been scrapped; we
were all in hock for automobiles, radios, diamond rings, and the thou-
1S et OS
34 Population and Distribution [1926
sand and one knickknacks that you can buy for a dollar down and
a dollar when they catch you; and the country had to get back to
normalcy or perish. I have not yet been able to discover exactly what
normalcy is, but as far as I can make out it is intimately connected
with r913 and Canton flannel nighties.
I was told that people were skimping on necessities in order to
indulge in luxuries; that retail dealers were nervous and bought only
from hand to mouth, because they could not know from one day to
the next what their business would be; that the consumption of the
country was far below productive capacity, and that we simply had
to have a drastic readjustment.
I talked with bankers, business men and farmers, and also I kept my
eyes and my ears open, and I reached the conclusion that our only
trouble is that we have not yet awakened to what this country really
is—what has happened, what is happening or what can happen.
We have been measuring it with old measures. We have been think-
ing, “For the poor always ye have with you.” We cannot comprehend
that to America has come a new order of things—that dire poverty
is as rare as small pox and as obsolete; that we are in the midst of a
great experiment the like of which the world has never even dreamed
of, and that it lies with us to carry on or to funk.
Our national machine is wondrously strong. It hit many a wicked
bump in the three years from 1920 to 1923, and those bumps, which
would have smashed any other machine, merely tuned ours up—as
one tunes up a new motor car. .
But we have built up our machine by good management which
pays high wages. We have an enormous stock of good managers.
We have only a few bad ones and they are principally in the textiles
and in coal. But over and above all and more powerful than anything
is this—our people have the will to be prosperous. That is the great
fact which shows out all over the country—and it is nowhere more
evident than in the flapper... .
The real flapper is what used to be known as the “poor working
girl’’—who, if the accounts are true, dragged herself off day by day
to work until someone came along and married her. Sometimes she
was a Cinderella, but more often she graduated a household drudge.
The flapper of to-day is a very different person. In dress she is as
standardized as a chain hotel—and incidentally hotel bedrooms are
No. rx] The Flapper: A National Institution ge
becoming so alike that you can remember what city you are in only
by tacking a local newspaper on the wall. Barring size, flappers at
a hundred feet are as standardized as Ford cars. As far as dress
goes, they are a simplified national product. ... There is no dis-
tinction between the town flapper and the farm flapper—the auto-
mobile has wiped them out. There is no distinction in the cut of
clothing between the rich flapper and the poor flapper—national
advertising has attended to that. The rich flapper has better clothing
than the poor one, but a block away they are all flappers.
The outstanding characteristic of the flapper is not her uniform but
her independence and her will to be prosperous.
She is no clinging vine. I was in the office of the president of a good-
sized bank on the Pacific Coast when his daughter and several of her
high-school friends burst in—flappers all. We got to talking and I
found that these girls, not one of whom had any need to work, all
intended to find jobs during the summer, and they thought that most
of the girls in school would do the same. They all wanted to know how
to make a living—and to have a good time doing ?t. That seems to
be common everywhere.
Girls will no longer marry men who can merely support them—
they can support themselves better than can many of the men of
their own age. They have awakened to the fact that the “superior
sex” stuff is all bunk. They will not meekly bow their heads to the
valiant man who roars, “ Where is that dress I bought you three years
AGE a al ops
The flapper wants to look well, and she is willing to provide for
herseli—employers everywhere told me that the women were doing
better work than the men, and they do seem to be mentally more
alert. All of which means that the man who marries the modern
flapper has got to provide for her—she will not be merely an unpaid
servant. And this in turn means that the men have got to work—
than which nothing better could happen for the country. The flapper
is to-day our most important national institution. .
The will to be prosperous has brought prosperity. We have prac-
tically no poverty, and I judge that at least two-thirds of what little
we have is voluntary.
The rest is due to accident or disease and must clearly be distin-
guished from destitution, for its amount is negligible and can easily
36 Population and Distribution [1926
be cared for by the communities in which it exists. There is work at
fair wages for anyone who will go after it—some will not go after it.
For instance, in southern Ohio, near Ironton, I found many squatter
shacks—filthy huts thrown together from any old thing and standing
in seas of mud. Lounging about were always a big, brutish, dull-
eyed man and a slatternly, barefoot, tired-looking woman, with any-
where from half a dozen pale, ill-nourished, half-dressed children—
not a few of whom had the look of imbeciles. These men were soft-
coal miners. They have had almost no work since 1919, yet they
persist in being miners.
An engineer told me that on a big excavating job near by he had
offered these men six dollars a day, but not one of them would take a
job. He actually had to import his labor. The miners shuffled over
every day to see how things were coming, but not one of them would
work even for a single day. That is what I mean by voluntary poverty.
We have the same sort of thing through the mountains in the South,
and we have the white trash and the shiftless Negro, but the tremen-
dous industrial expansion of the South—for there are cotton mills
going up nearly everywhere—is drawing down the mountaineers and
taking the white trash and making human beings of them, while the
Negro is leaving the South and scattering far and wide through the
industries of the Middle West.
Nearly all our backward people have felt the touch of money.
They have increased their wants. They all want automobiles, and
the women, and especially the girls, want clothes. They are learning
that they can get the things they want only by work... .
Within a generation the regular payment of wages will completely
have transformed the South. The daughters and the sons nowhere
are content just to live!
The purchasing power of the South Atlantic States, although it
is still small as compared with that of the North Atlantic States, is
probably fifty times what it was before the World War. And that is
the sort of thing which is going on everywhere. This country is not
static. It is in flux; it is ridiculous to talk of the country in terms of
European economics—for instance, to talk of saturation points. We do
not even know what there is to saturate—we are changing so mightily.
Samuel Crowther, ‘‘Aren’t We All Rich Now?” in Collier’s (New York, Nover-
Ser 7, 1926), 9-10 passim.
CHAPTER III—SECTIONS AND NEW STATES
12. The Great Empire by the Lakes (1900)
BY FREDERIC C. HOWE
Howe was Commissioner of Immigration at the port of New York, 1914-1919;
has written many books on political and social subjects.—For material on the
general subject of this chapter see such periodicals as World’s Work, Century, and
Review of Reviews; also consult Readers’ Guide under names of states, and of sec-
tions, such as New England.
ROBABLY the greatest industrial phenomenon of the past ten
years, unless it be the trust development, is the consummation
of the dreams of far-sighted business men, by which the iron mines of
Lake Superior have been linked with the coal and coke fields of Penn-
sylvania. This has led to the tremendous development of the iron and
steel industry in the Pittsburg and Cleveland districts. Human labor
has been reduced to an insignificant item in all the processes, from the
extraction of the crude ore from the earth, to the production of the
finished product at the furnace nearly a thousand miles away. Rail-
roads have been built from Pittsburg to Lake Erie, as have immense
docks and cavernous iron steamships, as large as ocean liners, designed
almost exclusively for the transportation of ore, coal, and grain. All
the essentials of production, including the mines, steamships, rail-
roads, docks, and furnaces, have been combined under one hand. At
the present time Carnegie, the American Steel & Wire Company, and
the National Steel Company own their own boats and do at least a
part of their own carrying business. These companies also own their
own mines.
Coincident with this consolidation there has occurred a revolution
in industrial methods before which earlier achievements sink into
insignificance. A few decades ago the blast furnace was an enlarged
blacksmith shop, and the finished product, whether a steel rail or
horseshoe nail, was largely the result of manual labor. By present
37
38 Sections and New States [z900
processes, from the moment the steam scoop, handling tons of native
ore, touches the soil in Minnesota or Michigan until the raw material
issues as a hundred-pound steel rail on the banks of the Monongahela
River, the element of human labor is scarce appreciable. Trains in
the Superior district are loaded by steam scoops. At the docks the
cars are unloaded into bins or pockets. From these pockets, ships of
five to seven thousand gross tons’ capacity are loaded in a few hours’
time, through chute attachments running into the holds of the vessels.
In the Mesabi range a half dozen men will mine five thousand tons
of ore in a few hours. An ore vessel is loaded almost without the use
of pickax or shovel. Gravitation does the work formerly done by man.
On the lower lakes the vessels are unloaded in a few hours’ time by
hoisting-devices or clam-like scoops which will do the work of sixty
men and transport ten tons of ore in a single clasp of the scoop. Steel
cars with a capacity of sixty tons are unloaded at the furnaces by im-
mense cranes which pick the cars clear from the tracks, transport them
to an ore pile, and dump them as simply and easily, and with as much
precision, as if they were but buckets of sand. The earth is tapped,
and genii-like enginery, with man’s hand on the throttle, turns out
the finished product.
And as if by the prevision of nature, the vast coal regions of western
Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia furnish return cargoes to the
upper lakes. These return cargoes greatly reduce freight rates. The
coal tonnage of the lakes for the year 1899 amounted to 9,000,000
tons, which was taken from the bituminous coal fields of these states
and transported to its destination, by the aid of the same sort of
machinery as is used in the handling of ore.
Inferior only in importance to the iron ore and coal industry is that
of the copper mines of the upper Peninsula of Michigan. The long,
projecting promontory on the southern shore of Lake Superior, known
as Keweenaw Point, is dotted with copper mines, of which the Calu-
met and Hecla is the chief. From these mines are extracted millions
of dollars’ worth of native copper every year. This region supplies a
large part of the world’s copper, and the mines yield fabulous returns
to those who anticipated the future of this industry. The stock of the
Calumet and Hecla mine, of the par value of twenty-five dollars per
share, is now quoted at seven hundred and sixty dollars per share.
Upon this stock but twelve dollars and fifty cents has ever been paid
No. 12] The Great Empire by the Lakes 39
in. And some of the iron mines in the Lake Superior ranges show a
commercial standing only less remarkable.
From the watershed of the Great Lakes, moreover, is taken a large
part of the lumber supply for the eastern and central states, while to
the south of Lake Erie, in western Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Vir-
ginia, and Indiana, are the great oil fields, which supply not only
America, but the world. with petroleum. Salt in immense quantities
is secured from the region about Cleveland, while the building-stones
of the upper lakes are among the most beautiful that we have.
Nature has been lavish of her riches in this Great Lakes region.
She has created here an empire richer than that of the Incas. For
while the precious metals are not found, those which furnish the
sinews of modern commerce abound in quantities to supply the world.
The dividends of one copper mine in the Lake Superior district,
whose capital stock is but $2,500,000, amounted in the year 1899 to
$10,000,000. In 1898 the same mine declared dividends of $5,000,000.
Some of the iron mines of the same district distribute the total capital
value of their mines in dividends each year. And during the past ten
years hundreds of persons have been enriched from the iron, coal,
copper, oil, and gas fields of this region. Could these bounties have
been preserved to the state, the problems of finance would have been
easy of solution.
The great power tunnel by which the forces of Niagara are utilized
for the generation of power, as well as a similar power canal in con-
struction at Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, evidence again the way
nature is forced to do man’s work while he stands by. And the
secret of the phenomenal development of this region lies in this fact.
It has been brought about by the harnessing of force and the utiliza-
tion of man’s ingenuity and the engineer’s skill. From mine to mill
a thousand miles away, with two breakages in carriage, is as simple,
if not a simpler process than a like breakage in freight at the Hudson
River. The element of labor cost in a ton of ore from mine to furnace
has been reduced to insignificance. It amounts to but a few cents.
The forces of steam, hydraulics, pneumatics, and electricity have
achieved this result.
One of the great, if nci the great, problem of the last generation
has been the reduction of transportation charges. By this cheapening
of carriage cost space has been annihilated. To us this problem was
40 Sections and New States [1900
basic. Our distances are so great. How well we have succeeded is
seen in the low railroad and steamboat freight rates. On the Great
Lakes the charges for carrying a ton of freight one mile are less than
one-tenth of one cent. Railroad freights in competition are about
four times as much. To-day the eyes of European engineers are
turned on the transportation systems of America,
But transportation on the lakes includes something more than
delivery from port to port. It involves the transfer from railroad to
boat and from boat to railroad. And these processes have become
as much a part of lake transportation as the carriage. In this respect
inventive ingenuity has kept pace with our demands, and transfers
at the docks are now accomplished by immense machinery, which
seems to operate with almost human intelligence.
It is through the waterways of the Great Lakes that a large portion
of the grain of the world is carried. By reason of the low water
freight charges, the prairies of the West are able to lay their products
down in the European market at a price otherwise impossible. The
significance of these great waterways, not only to the states of the
West, but to the civilization of the world, cannot be overstated.
And far-seeing men of this region are now casting their eyes toward
the markets of the world. Plans have been matured to place the
coal fields of Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania in immediate
touch with European ports. Within a short time a fleet of boats will
carry coal between Newport News and Europe. The former point
will be connected with the interior by a railroad. This will mean a
fuel economy to European cities of from one dollar to two dollars a
ton. One may safely say that the next generation will see the coal
fields and iron mines of America supplying the European consumer,
much as the wheat fields of the West now supply the English artisan.
Within the next year and a half it is freely expected that American
ore will be landed in the Clyde. To-day America is “carrying coals
to Newcastle.”
Frederic C. Howe, in World’s Work, November, 1900 (New York), I, 409-412
passim.
No. 13; Remedies for the Southern Problem 41
13. Remedies for the Southern Problem (1905)
BY PROFESSOR ALBERT BUSHNELL HART
The author, Professor of Government in Harvard University, has written on a
great variety of subjects concerned with American History.—For further informa-
tion by him on the present subject, see A. B. Hart, The Southern South.
HE frst and most obvious remedy is to remove the sup-
posed cause. This idea of deportation of the negroes was
suggested more than a century ago by Thomas Jefferson and was
later urged by Lincoln. An instant objection is that it is resisted by
nearly every one of the nine million negroes, South and North alike.
They no more wish to cross the ocean eastward than their ancestors
did to come westward. The negroes in general are attached to their
homes and would probably fight rather than add to the repeated
failures of attempts to build up civilized communities of American
negroes in Africa, which is the only region available for such an
emigration. An equally strong objection is that the white people
absolutely will not permit the negro to leave the country. When in
1889 attempts were made to draw negroes to Kansas the boats that
were carrying them were stopped by armed men and the negroes were
driven back with the shotgun. On the other hand, in a number of
communities, especially in the mountains, the poor whites will not
permit the negroes to come in; and, for that matter, there is a town
of several thousand people in southern Ohio where no negro has
ever been allowed to stop over night. Nevertheless, where the negro
is there he stays; and for the very simple reason that without him
or her there would be no breakfast in the big house, no wood cut for
the fires, no cotton raised, no babies dressed—for the real confidence
of the whites in the negro race is shown by their almost universal
practice of committing their little children to negro nurses. To deport
the negro would mean the social disruption as well as the economic
ruin of the greater part of the South, and the fierce and brutal advocacy
of that method which one hears occasionally from Southern men is
simply a piece of acting.
For there is no substitute in sight, since the South has never been
able to attract foreign immigrants. The census of 1900 shows that
42 Sections and New States [1905
the eleven States that seceded in 1861 have 11,400,000 native whites,
7,200,000 negroes and only 350,000 people of foreign birth, of whom
two-thirds are in Louisiana and Texas, while the rest of the Union
shows 45,300,000 native whites, 1,600,000 negroes and 10,000,000
foreigners. The figures explain themselves: most immigrants work
with their hands and avoid regions where there is a poor opportunity
for their children, and where handwork classes them with a servile
race. The only foreign element now seeking the South is the Italian,
some thousands of whom are to be found in the Mississippi bottoms;
but their influx is likely to be checked when they discover that they,
like the negroes, are to be excluded from the suffrage wherever they
come to be in the majority or to exercise the balance of power.
A remedy not publicly advocated, yet practiced in some remote
parts of the South, is peonage. It is not necessary to go to the length
of some State laws which assume to legalize contracts by which the
laborer agrees to work or else to accept a whipping and a bull pen;
servitude is realized if they are deliberately kept in such a condition
of debt and dependence that they cannot acquire land or move about
freely. The testimony of people who have visited rural plantations
is that in many places great advantage is taken of the ignorance of
the negro; that he is cheated in his efforts to buy land, that in some
places he is a serf, tied to the land. Inasmuch as probably a majority
of the intelligent people of the South insist that the negro was better
off in slavery than in freedom, there is in some regions insufficient
healthy public sentiment to protect the rural laborer.
Another method widely applied in the South has been put by
Senator Tillman in the sententious form: “We shall have to send a
few more negroes to hell.” This brute method is a deliberate attempt
to keep the race down by occasionally shooting negroes because they
are bad, or loose-tongued, or influential, or acquiring property; and
by insisting that the murder of a white man, or sometimes even a
saucy speech by a negro to a white man, is to be followed by swift,
relentless and often tormenting death. In every case of passionate
conflict between two races the higher one loses most, because it has
most to lose; and lynch law as a remedy for the lawlessness of the
negroes has the disadvantage of demoralizing the white race, and
eventually of exposing white men to the uncontrollable passions of
other white men. The usual, tho not the real, justification for
No. 13] Remedies for the Southern Problem 43
lynching is that nothing else can protect or avenge white women.
Rapes and lynchings aggravate but do not cause race hostility. Any
Southern State might forthwith reduce both the negro crime and
that of his white executioners by following a useful precedent of
slavery times—by providing a special tribunal of reputable men, not
necessarily lawyers, with summary process, testimony behind closed
doors if desirable, and quick but civilized punishment for aggravated
crimes of violence, committed by whites or blacks.
Another remedy is education. It would be very unjust to leave
the impression that the white people of the South as a community
approve of solving the negro question by aggravating it. Indeed, the
South has made great sacrifices since the Civil War to educate the
negro, tho it somewhat exaggerates its benefactions by dwelling
on the fact that the negroes pay two per cent. of the taxes and furnish
nearly one-half of the school children. One of the most influential
newspapers in the South recently threatened to cut off the funds for
negro education if Northern benefactors did not cease giving money
to negro schools. In New York and Chicago there is no protest
because the people who furnish nineteen-twentieths of the school
children pay only one-twentieth of the taxes. The South, however,
begins to realize that reducing the present illiteracy in the South
among both negroes and whites is not all the battle. Your negro
chamber-maid may have been through eight years’ study in the city
schools and yet remain incredibly ignorant and brutish. Still the
North also has learned that ability to read, write and cipher will not
make model citizens out of the morally degraded. In many ways
the most hopeful thing for the negro is the work of institutions like
Fisk, Atlanta and Talladega, which aim to train future professional
men and women and especially teachers.
Hence the great interest now felt by good people in the South in
industrial education for negroes, and sometimes even for whites.
This is partly due to the success of Hampton, Tuskegee, Caihoun and
other like institutions, which have proven the expansion of mind
resulting from the more intelligent forms of handiwork combined
with a judicious use of books. In these schools a great part of the
good is done by the character of the teachers, and nobody can see
the fine body of young, alert minds trained by the best universities
of the country which make up the faculty, say of Tuskegee, without
44 Sections and New States [1905
hopefulness that they will train as well as instruct. Yet from the
Southern point of view their success will raise the same ultimate
difficulty as other forms of education for the negroes. Notwithstand-
ing the influence of a few notable men, at the head of whom is
Booker T. Washington, the whites in general do not wish to see
leaders and organizers arise among the negroes; they distrust the
negro preachers and have a contempt for negro professors, lawyers
and physicians. If industrial education produces good blacksmiths,
carpenters and domestic servants the South will be pleased, tho
perhaps the trades unions will have something to say; but the South
does not wish to see political and social leaders springing up among
the negroes, lest they attempt such organization of the negroes as
would give them power over the white race... .
Any remedy for the ills that beset the South must recognize that the
condition of the negroes is discouraging; that in forty years of freedom
they have made less progress than white people expected; that as a
race they have little sense of truth and perhaps of sexual morality;
that they furnish great numbers of idlers and many criminals. This
dark picture must, however, include also about half the poor whites,
who, tho far superior to the negroes in intellect, match them in igno-
rance and overmatch them in blood-thirstiness. These are the condi-
tions from which the community must extricate itself or admit that
it cannot civilize its own people.
It is perfectly true, and we of the North must candidly acknowledge
and appreciate it, that many Southerners are making genuine and self-
sacrificing effort to upraise their colored neighbors, by personal in-
terest in their education, by protection of their rights, by example of
moderation and respect for law, by appreciation (so far as the color
line admits) of their best men. These are the white people who ought
to solve the problem if anybody, yet they are precisely the people who
see the only solution in a very slow elevation of the colored race, dur-
ing which many things may come in to accentuate the race problem.
On one side the remedy is the slow uplifting of the negro race, the
practice of those homely virtues of industry, steadiness, thrift and
habits of saving which have made the Northern communities what
they are. The Southern people are right in demanding that the negroes
themselves shall discourage and discountenance the criminals of their
race, and make it their business to help to bring to legal, orderly
No. 13] Remedies for the Southern Problem AS
punishment the desperate criminals who arouse the most fearful re-
sentment of the whites. The negroes must be taught to respect and
honor the best members of their own race and to bring up their chil-
dren to follow such models. That is the way, and the only way, in
which a race can rise.
But how can the negroes be expected to respect and admire what
the whites despise? Can the poor white call the thriftlessness of the
negro hopeless? Is the negro to set the example of lawabiding to the
white man? Are the Southern whites to abjure the duty of the highest
in the community to make the standard of coolness, patience and
observance of law? Why does not the white man, who boasts of his
interest in and aid to the negro during slavery, do more to educate him
now? The other day a South Carolina storekeeper who stepped into a
negro school and made a speech of encouragement found himself in
danger of mobbing and made an abject recantation. Why not every-
where put cultivated white teachers into the negro schools, such as are
employed in Charleston? Why should not negroes of high character be
honored by degrees from institutions of learning? Why do not the
white people with good will open the door of opportunity to a few
places in the public service to negroes whom they recognize as
qualified?
The reason is simple; the Southern whites have an unfounded and
unformulated fear that somehow white supremacy is endangered; and
they see no halting place between acknowledging that some negroes
are men of character and “permitting your daughter to marry a
nigger.” The true remedy for the Southerner is to do with the negro
exactly what his brethren are doing up North with the Pole, the Slo-
vak and the Hungarian. Why does he not make the best of a bad job
and not the worst? Why not set before the negro every possible in-
ducement to rise, by facilitating the purchase of land, by opening new
industries, by granting to the best negroes such scanty rewards as the
white man’s color line permits? The Southern white community
may well ponder the meaning of one of Booker Washington’s noblest
utterances: “I will never allow any man to drag me down by making
me hate him!”
Albert Bushnell Hart, in Independent (New York, 1905), LVIII, 993-996 passim.
46 Sections and New States [zorr
14. Arizona and New Mexico (1911)
BY CHARLES MOREAU HARGER
Harger is a journalist and a frequent contributor to periodicals. Has been di-
rector and lecturer in the Department of Journalism, University of Kansas. Editor
of the Abilene (Kansas) Daily Reflector —Bibliography as in No. 12 above.
OR centuries 235,000 square miles of gray desert, blue hills,
mesas, and valleys dozed under almost cloudless skies. The
awakening has come in two distinct periods. Said an old ranchman
of New Mexico: “Eighteen years ago I moved here from Illinois.
Practically all the Americans in New Mexcio were from Arkansas,
Tennessee, Texas, Missouri. They drifted in after the war, just as
Northerners went to Kansas and Nebraska. They were stockmen;
so are their descendants to-day. Ten years ago, when irrigation
became a feature of agriculture, families from Illinois, Indiana, and
Ohio arrived on homeseekers’ excursions. Later, Nebraska, Iowa,
and Kansas furnished settlers, until now we have folks from all over
the East.”
In Arizona the mines brought the first American residents. They
came seeking copper, gold, silver. Later came the farmer and the
home-builder. To-day on the streets of Phoenix or Bisbee is a cosmo-
politan assembly representing every section of the Nation.
So on its 122,000 square miles New Mexico has 327,000 population;
Arizona on its 113,000 square miles has 200,000. While historically
and physically having much in common, the Territories are tempera-
mentally far apart. “It comes from their varied settlement,” ex-
plained ex-Governor J. H. Kibbey, of Arizona. “New Mexico’s
valleys run north and south, and the early Mexican sheep-herders
pastured their flocks far northward. When given grants for more or
less valuable services to ruler or conqueror, they chose lands with which
they were familiar. The American settlers, westward bound, found a
start made toward civilization, and stopped there in large numbers.
In Arizona the valleys extend east and west, and the herders were less
likely to cross deserts to reach them. The discovery of mines brought
the Americans, and not until a later era came the farmer.”
So one State is pastoral, the other devoted more largely to mines,
and each harbors a grievance against the East. “We have not re-
No. 14] Arizona and New Mexico Ay
ceived a square deal,” said Governor R. E. Sloan, of Arizona. “The
East has looked upon the Southwest as yet existing in the wild and
woolly frontier period, with cowboys ‘shooting up ’ the towns, with
terrorism frequently rampant. On the contrary, no Eastern State
community is better behaved or has a higher average of citizenship
than these new States.” ...
In one direction do both States look for industrial progress—irriga-
tion. Their mines produce great wealth, likely to increase as the hills
are more thoroughly tested; their lumber camps are important. But
mines and lumber camps do not bring homes; they attract migratory
laborers whose interest is ephemeral. The farm makes for develop-
ment of a social life. Only by irrigation can either State hope to build
up such a feature. Month after month of cloudless skies and pulsat-
ing sunlight will not, even on good soil, raise crops. “Dry farm-
ing ” is a delusion when the season is too dry. ‘‘Thousands of settlers
have tried it and failed,” said a Territorial officer. “No amount of
cultivation can bring moisture from dry skies, and in most years it is
a doubtful venture.” Unless combined with ranching, the settler is
unwise to seek a competency by that route. Better twenty acres under
ditch than two hundred on the unwatered prairie. The expense of
intensive culture necessary to raise crops with a minimum of rainfall
is not repaid by the production. This hundreds of disappointed
families have discovered.
Each State has its special pride in irrigation enterprise. New Mexico.
has approximately 500,000 acres under ditch, with 3,000,000 more
amenable to artificial watering. It will take decades to utilize it all,
but some day the waters of the Rio Grande and its tributaries, with
the flow of smaller streams and surface moisture, will be conserved.
The Pecos Valley is already practically all under the plow; the Mesilla
Valley is rapidly being improved as settlers realize its possibilities.
The Government Reclamation Service is expending millions in proj-
ects that will fertilize vast areas. Of these, that of the Rio Grande
is largest. On that river, seventy-five miles north of Las Cruces, is
located one of the greatest natural reservoir sites in the world. Below
this site is the Mesilla Valley; then for twenty miles north of El Paso,
and for a like distance below that city, in Texas, is another large area
of extremely fertile land. Immediately across the river, in the Repub-
lic of Mexico, and in the vicinity of the city of Juarez, are found,
48 Sections and New States [zorr
approximately, 25,000 acres of equally valuable soil. Here the
Elephant Butte project, to cost $9,000,000, one of the most important
in the Reclamation Service undertakings, is to be constructed. For
Mexico’s share Congress appropriated $1,000,000. The total area
watered will be 180,000 acres—110,o0o in New Mexico, 45,000 in
Texas, and 25,000 in Mexico. In three or four years some storage will
be provided.
Nearer completion is Arizona’s portion in the Service’s notable
work—the Roosevelt Dam on the Salt River, to be dedicated by Mr.
Roosevelt next March. Here the Salt River Valley lies like an out-
stretched hand reaching westward, with a rock-bound gateway at
the wrist. The great bulwark of masonry, built at a cost of $6,000,000,
rears its 240 feet, a massive retainer of a lake covering 17,000 acres.
Behind it flood waters will be held to be spread out over 200,000
acres, with an additional 40,000 acres to be irrigated by pumping.
Here will be demonstrated, as in other similar projects, the possibil-
ities of an acre. Where a man can take $705.65 in asparagus from
134 acres and $980 from one acre of blackberries, or where 7% acres
of mixed berries and melons yield net $3,200, or ten acres of oranges
produce 1,800 boxes which return an average of $4 per box, it is clear
that only a few will care to own more than they can well cultivate.
“Agriculture,” said Governor W. J. Mills, of New Mexico, ‘‘is the
hope of the Southwest, winning to us men who are worthy as citizens
and successful as managers.” . .
The Southwest has peculiar problems, such as face no other part
of our Nation. Chief among them is that of the Mexican population—
the politician does not say “Mexican,” he refers to “our Spanish-
American friends.” There are plenty of them. In New Mexico
135,000, 41 per cent of the population, according to the Census super-
visor, are Spanish-Americans. Many more have some Spanish blood.
There are towns and counties wholly dominated by them in politics
and business. Once the Territory was theirs, but American immigra-
tion has changed that, and to-day the “native” occupies a secondary
place. But he must be reckoned in every accounting.
When the Constitutional Convention met, October 3, of the one
hundred delegates, thirty were Mexican. All were Republicans,
and added their votes to that of forty-one Americans, making seventy-
one Republicans to twenty-nine Democrats. In some of the precincts
No. 14] Arizona and New Mexico 49
the ballots for the election of delegates were printed in Spanish.
This was the excuse expressed by a Territorial officer: “The precincts
where this was done have an almost wholly Mexican population.
The voters are men who cannot read or write English, though they
can speak and understand it. It was simpler to print the ballots so
they could read them than to take each voter into the booth and ex-
plain the wording of the ballot. With the next generation there will
be no such problem. Every school in the Territory teaches English
to every pupil. Spanish is taught only as an additional language
in the high schools. All must know English; but the earlier genera-
tion will never learn it.”
This Mexican population is of two classes: a large portion the
laborers, the sheepmen; a smaller part men of means, shrewd business
managers. Curiously, in view of the usual conception of the Mexican,
he is given a good reputation by those who know him best. “I have
had twenty years’ experience with him,” said the manager of a one-
hundred-thousand-acre ranch. “I have never found better laborers
or men who would keep a contract more faithfully. They do not
strike, and, treated well, they remain with you. I have bought tens
of thousands of sheep of Mexican shepherds without a written con-
tract, and never had one fail to do as he agreed—which is more than
I can say for some American stock-owners. We must have laborers,
and this class furnishes them. Without them it would be difficult
to develop a definite place in the Southwest.” .. .
In Arizona there is the Mormon question. Two members of the
Church of the Latter-Day Saints were elected members of the Arizona
Convention. Said Governor Sloan: “It has been repeatedly charged
that the Mormon vote in Arizona is thirty per cent of the total; it is
not more than ten per cent. The people of this sect are farmers and
good citizens. They are prohibitionists and not polygamists. There
is no indication that they will ever be a large factor in the State’s
politics. The Mexican population is not more than fifteen per cent,
mostly itinerants, and likewise no important factor in politics, for the
American population is increasing, while the Spanish-American stands
still. We have had clean Legislatures, no scandals, and have an am-
bition to make this a good State for the farmer and business man
alike. With our 400,000 acres now in cultivation we can support twice
the present population. Eventually there will be 1,250,000 acres
50 Sections and New States [zorr
tilled, and every acre extraordinarily productive. We want settlers
and capital, and propose to give both square treatment.”
This last sentence is the key to the sentiment of the dweller in the
Southwest. Men and money are needed. Irrigation enterprises
cannot pay unless settlers come to till the lands. Here and there a
plunger has equipped a great ranch house, making a mansion in the
desert. He has lived like a king, impressing every titled visitor—
and then departed. Such investors are not wanted. The future
will depend on the worker, the man who comes to stay. Owing
to the vast distances and the waste desert lands, there can never be a
network of railways such as has covered Oklahoma and other parts
of the Middle West. Two trunk lines with some branches constitute
practically all the railway facilities likely to be had for many years.
The new States will be disposed to consider this in their statutes, as
they will the work of capital that has developed the mines and stored
the waters; but there is a strong undercurrent of disposition to regulate
corporations and secure for the citizen his full rights.
In New Mexico, where the Republican majority is overwhelming,
primaries, initiative and referendum, and similar progressive ideas
have not been indorsed. The Constitution is to be, as Governor Mills
expressed it, “safe and sane,” with the idea of submitting additional
propositions to the votors separately. The Mexican voters, being
largely sheepmen, are generally high-tariff advocates, and this ac-
counts for much of their allegiance to Republicanism. In Arizona the
Democrats are in large majority, the Constitutional Convention
having forty-four Democrats to eight Republicans, no Spanish-
American delegate being elected. The Constitution will contain many
“Progressive” sections. In neither State is equal suffrage or pro-
hibition likely to carry. The initiative and referendum will probably
be a part of Arizona’s organic law. These differences indicate the vari-
ation in settlement and business interests in the two new States. . .
A clear-headed, energetic people is developing the new States,
eager to make them, in Western parlance, “a good place to live in.”
That success will come is inevitable. The era of the “bad man” has
passed—it is punishable by heavy fine to carry concealed weapons in
either State. The era of the home-builder is at hand.
Set amid twenty miles of brown-gray prairie was a tiny adobe dwell-
ing, an adobe-walled corral, and a bit of plowed ground. Thought-
No. 15] The Oil Fields of Oklahoma 51
fully, from the observation platform of the California Limited, a pas-
senger watched it. ‘‘My father,” he commented, “once started West
by ox-team. In mid-Iowa he became discouraged, squatted on a
claim, farmed for three years, then sold out for two hundred dollars
and went back East. To-day, part of the business section of Des
Moines is built on that farm. It may be—”
The suggestion lent keener interests to that dull-brown group fast
blending into the hazy distance.
Into every beginning in the new States enters some vision of the
future. In a half-century more, it may be—Who knows?
Charles Moreau Harger, Our Two New States, in Outlook, January 28, torr (New
York), XCVII, 165-176 passim.
= MMMM
15. The Oil Fields of Oklahoma (1919)
BY CHARLES MOREAU HARGER
For Harger, see No. 14 above.—Bibliography as in No. 12 above; see also Walter
S. Tower, The Story of Oil.
OR the past decade oil booms have centered in the mid-continent
field—Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas—which has succeeded
the eastern territory as the great source of petroleum supply, produc-
ing nearly half the output of the United States. From the first well
in southeast Kansas in the middle nineties, it has spread until in
scarcely a county west of the Mississippi has there not been search for
the wealth millions of years old, settled in pools formed by the chang-
ing structure of earth. These pools may be large or small; they may be
under such compression that when tapped the black flood will rise to
the surface or may require pumping—but always fortune beckons if
once the underground store of oil can be found.
Location and development are systematized to the limit of ingenu-
ity, the outgrowth of years of experience. At the beginning is the
spying out of the land. Three men in a Ford car, carrying spades,
pickaxes, tripods, and levels, come quietly into town, putting up at the
second best hotel. For days and weeks they travel over the country
measuring, digging, taking notes of slopes, valleys, hills, and the out-
cropping ledges of rocks. Then as quietly they depart.
52 Sections and New States [r919
A little later come three other men—alert, well-dressed—who put
up at the best hotel. They hire motor-cars and drive over a portion
of the country, stopping at every farm in a selected portion.
“We want to lease your farm for oil,” is their introduction. ‘Tf
we can get, say 10,000 to 25,000 acres leased, we will put down a well
inside of a year, and you will know whether or not there is oil there.”
“What are you paying for leases?” comes back the question.
It is explained that one dollar will be paid for a lease on the farm
for one year, the farmer to get one-eighth of all the oil produced
on his land, delivered free to the pipe-line. If no well is drilled in a
year in that territory, the leases may be renewed by paying a dollar
an acre from year to year. No leases, no well. The farmer signs;
so do his neighbors, and suddenly the county wakes to the first
ebullition of an oil boom.
This is ‘‘wildcatting,” or exploring new territory. The first men
were geologists or locators, and they reported that the surface con-
ditions were good. They do not pretend to say where oil certainly is,
but claim to be able to determine with fair exactness where conditions
are favorable.
“Of course,” explained an oilman with long experience, “no one
can tell with certainty what is hundreds of feet underground, but
study and experiments of the past few years have given a great
volume of facts on which to base opinions. Oil is found only where
geologic strata have been bent by upheavals in the past. There may
be structures where there is no oil, but there is no oil where the
structure is not favorable. Chance of success is increased by surface
indications, but, after all, it is a gamble. Geology plays a more
important part in the location of every oil country removed from
proved fields than a few years ago, because conditions are better
understood. Hence, the developers fall into two classes: companies
that pay high prices for leases in proved territory, and the wildcatters.
The first play a comparatively safe game, with high expense and
smaller profits. The wildcatters pay little or nothing for leases in
unknown country. Their geologists choose the likely places for
drilling. If a few good wells are brought in, their profits are large.
Theirs is really the gamble end of the oil business, for the chances
are in favor of the operator in country already producing oil.”
From their study the locators, or geologists, report indications of
2
No. 15} The Oil Fields of Oklahoma 53
oil at 2,000 to 3,000 feet, the usual depth at which wells are drilled
in the interior. Leases secured, the financial operations begin. The
interest in the leases may be sold outright to one of the great producing
and distributing companies or their subsidiaries. These constantly
explore new territory, setting aside a few hundred thousand dollars
each year to maintain production—for every pool has its limit of
content. One company last year drilled forty wells, only three of
which were good producers.
A large leased acreage in a field that has been passed on by experts
is a tangible asset. The promoters may decide to finance it them-
selves. A derrick is erected; drill, engine, workmen appear, and
down goes a test hole Chinaward. Up to this time the only activity
has been that of the geologists and the lease writers; now is reared
the pyramid of speculation which has attracted millions from capi-
talists large and small.
With leases on 25,000 acres and a well being drilled, the promoter
makes a trip east. To brokers he presents his plans, tells of the
favorable reports, and day by day receives telegrams telling how
many hundred feet the drill has penetrated. “It is a good wildcat
prospect,” he declares, and sells two-thirds of his leases for, say, $3
an acre, taking home $50,000. He can finish the well, costing these
days $30,000 to $40,000, and if it is a dry hole his profit is still sure.
The eastern broker sells the leases, either outright or in undivided
interest, on a basis of $5 or more an acre, and the buyers are “‘in the
oil game.” Each proudly announces that he has “oil interests” and
confidently awaits the outcome.
Or the promoters may organize the Bounding Billow Oil & Gas
Company, retaining 51 per cent of the stock and the management,
and take pages in such newspapers as will accept their advertising
announcing the sale of 10,000,000 shares at five cents a share, “well
now drilling and prices to advance next week.” On an even less
basis than this two Oklahoma sharps, recently arrested, took in over
$500,000 from trusting investors... .
But out in Fragrant Hill township the drill is pounding away,
sinking deeper each day into the earth. At 1,800 feet it strikes
‘‘oil-sand,” a layer of sand sprinkled with particles of oil. Excitement
rises locally. Every farmer has retained the statutory one-eighth
royalty in the oil to be produced on his place, and those nearest the
54 Sections and New States [r919
well commence to figure in millions. No company can lease the
entire product of the farm. Those living nearest the well plan on
moving to the city and buying a flock of limousines. Here enters
the next step in the high finance of the oil game.
To the farm adjoining the well rolls a big blue racing car carrying
another kind of promoter.
“What will you take for one-fourth of your royalty? ”’ he asks.
The farm owner is torn by conflicting interests. If oil were sure,
he should keep his entire property, if no oil is under his property,
now is the time to possess some real money. In the end he sells
one-fourth of his one-eighth for, say, $10,000, and the promoter is to
receive one thirty-second of the production, if any.
This fraction is capitalized for $100,000, divided into 1,000 “units ”
of $100 each; or into 5,000 units of $20 each; or, if the prometer has
soaring imagination, into 5,000,000 units of two cents each. This
procedure has for a long time evaded the blue sky law, as it was held
technically to be selling an actual interest in the outcome, and not
stock in a company. .. .
Who buys? Every class, from the banker to the laborer; from the
widow to the sales-girl and school-teacher. One grade teacher bor-
rowed on her salary contract to invest $400 in units last year—that
she sold out eventuaily for $1,000 did not alter the fact that she took
long chances. Of 4,059 wells completed in the established fields of
Oklahoma the first six months of 1919, 1,124 were dry holes. In
unproved territory it is a gambling chance, and production may in
the successful instances be so small as to return no profit. It is stated
that the average production of all wells in the United States now
producing oil is four and one-half barrels a day.
Supposing the men with the tripods and levels did guess right.
The well when it is down 2,600 feet suddenly becones a fountain
of oil, sending forth 3,000 barrels a day worth $2.25 to $2.70 a barrel!
Then is the thrill of a Jifetime The value of the leases held by a
single company, or by smaller investors down east, soars; units of
royalties near by, marketed at $20 each, go up to $100 and more;
royalties on all the surrounding farms jump to tens of thousands
cash; other wells are started as rapidly as machinery can be
secukedsts i
If the well be a “duster,” a dry hole, the entire pyramid collapses,
No. 16] Sport in the West 55
except for the promoters, who move on to other financial hunting-
grounds, having so planned that they win, no matter who loses.
Charles Moreau Harger, Romance of the Oil Fields, in Scribner’s Magazine, No-
vember, 1919 (New York), 616-623 passim.
poh BP eat
16. Sport in the West (1922)
BY GEORGE PALMER PUTNAM
Putnam is the present active head of the publishing firm of G. P. Putnam’s Sons.
Author of The Southland of North America (1913); In the Oregon Country; The
Smiting of the Rock (1918).—Bibliography as in No. 12 above; see also such heads
as Rodeos and Wild West, in the Readers’ Guide.
ACH year there are a number of these rodeos, or round-ups,
throughout the West, perhaps the most notable of them
being held at Pendleton, Oregon. .
The Round-up is a great deal more than a merely “Wild West
show.” It is wild and Western enough and reminiscent of the pictur-
esque past. But it is much more than an exhibition. It is a competi-
tion. It is a pennant race in which America’s best horsemen and
most competent cowboys compete.
Pendleton itself is a prosperous town in the heart of the wheat and
cattle country of eastern Oregon. Normally, I suppose, its population
is some fifteen thousand. But during the three days of the Round-Up,
when it is the focus of interest for most of the Pacific Northwest and
an increasing number of Eastern seeing-America-first-ers, it expands
miraculously to thrice that size. Well over thirty thousand enthusiasts
paid admission on the last day of this year’s show. Which at that
compares pretty well with a Polo Grounds attendance, especially
considering that Pendleton is some three thousand miles from Eastern
population centers and that the whole State of Oregon hasn’t as
many people as Brooklyn.
Consider, then, a frontier town—albeit a modern one with paved
streets, porcelain tubs, elevators, and all the metropolitan trimmings—
entirely turned over for three hectic days to the show, which the
town itself owns and conducts, not for profit but for the downright
56 Sections and New States [1932
glamour of it and the glory of the West that was and is. Cowboy
clothes are the order of the day—woolly “chaps,” swashbuckling
spurs clinking from leather boots, broad-rimmed Stetsons, gay-colored
silk shirts and scarfs, and, above all, gaudy vests hued like unto the
aurora borealis.
“ Assuredly,” as Charles Hanson Towne punned it, “here is where
the vest begins.”
There is a saying, epitomizing generosity, that one “would give
you his shirt.” Just that happened in Pendleton, for our hosts at
once insisted that we exchange our becollared drab affairs for their
own giddy silk creations. In celebration of which hospitable transfer
Wallace Irwin perpetrated a song that forthwith became the popular
Round-Up hit and doubtless by now echoes merrily throughout
cowland, to the tune of “Tourela”:
When I was in Oregon scratching the dirt,
I met a young cowboy who gave me his shirt.
The shirt it was silk, and the shirt it was red,
So I held out my hand and these fine words I said:
“Cowboy, O Cowboy, I hope you do well,
You’re a good-natured, bulldogging son of a swell.”
So I put on the shirt, and I tucked in the tail,
And beat it back East on the Oregon Trail.
The show itself is staged on a quarter-mile track and in an arena
at its center, the whole surrounded by bleachers and grand stands.
There is, of course, racing of all kinds—bareback, pony express (where
the riders shift the saddle from one horse to another at each change),
Indian squaw, and most picturesque of all, the wild-horse race, which
last is an unexampled epic of concentrated excitement. A score of
absolutely unbroken horses—animals who have felt neither bridle
nor saddle—snorting, raging, are turned into the track. At a signal
a group of mounted cowboys go after them, each ultimately roping
one. Then, in a welter of wild-eyed, fighting, biting, rolling, bucking
creatures, the rider and his assistant somehow contrive to get a
bandage over the horse’s eyes, which, after frantic struggles, quiets
him enough to make saddling possible. Then off with the eye bandages
and on with the race—and often enough, off with the rider! Remem-
ber, no horse ever has been ridden. Their one interest is to get rid
of saddle and rider. They have no intention whatever of going
No. 16] Sport in the West 57
around the track. Instead they buck and “sunfish,” actually roll
over on the ground, and generaliy mill around like four-footed demons
gone mad.
A wonderfully unforgettabie sight is that concentrated inferno of
insane horse-flesh and roistering fearless man-flesh. This year, just
to see a lean buckaroo named Punch Guyette ride the bereft cayuse
which luck wished on him—ride him right side up and upside down,
horse and rider somehow somersaulting quite completely, with Punch
remaining in the saddle, all with a whoop and a laugh, was in itself
quite worth the trip from New York.
And that wild-horse race is, of course, only a detail, a sort of curtain-
raiser, a tasty appetizer for the big events. The contests for bucking,
bull-dogging, and roping are the top-line attractions. And working
up to the championship decisions of the last day are a welter of hair-
raising elimination trials, so that the fifty or so riders are put through
their paces, under all sorts of circumstances, and the crowd is fairly
saturated with a veritable saturnalia of exciting sights.
Those Round-Up names mean little to us back here. Suffice to
say that Yakima Canutt (who this year rode third in the bucking)
is a Babe Ruth of cowland. Howard Tegland, world champion, and
Ray Bell—who wears a neat white collar even when astride twelve
hundred pounds of horse-hided insanity—are every bit as well known
out there as Dempsey and, say, Harold Bell Wright; while the Western
reputations of marvelous woman riders like Mable Strickland and
Bonnie McCarroll rank right up with Mary Pickford and Elsie Fergu-
son.
The bucking horses which supply the motive power, so to speak, for
the riding contests are the pick of the untamable “bad ” animals of
all the West. Their names become historic. There are “Lena ” (no
lady she!), “U-tell-Em,” “Bill McAdoo,” “Wiggles,” “Angel,” and
others. This year two especially bad-mannered beasts were christened
“Doc Traprock ” and “George Putnam.” Neither, we regret to state,
succeeded in unseating his rider!
The matter of getting the saddle on a “‘bad horse”’ is a problem in
itself, solved by the “wranglers.” Ultimately the rider gets aboard,
but not necessarily for long, for horses know every trick imaginable
likely to encourage an immediate divorce between themselves and the
unwelcome stranger perched upon their hurricane deck. Be the
58 Sections and New States [1922
horse a trained bucker or an outlaw, he can be counted upon for all
sorts of gymnastics, ranging from the “side wind ” and “sunfish ” and
“weave” to the straight buck and the high dive, not to mention the
pleasant trick of rearing and falling back on the rider.
They ride with only a halter, no reins or bridle being used. And
they must ride with style—ride “slick” —that is, straight up, with a
close seat, and “no daylight showing.” And really to impress the
judges the rider must “rake” the shoulders and rump of his horse
with his blunted spurs, and “fan” the animal at every jump, swinging
his hat with a full arm sweep. And, above all, he must not “pull
leather” or touch the saddle with either hand.
And then the roping. That means to ride after a wild Texas long-
horn steer, get a lasso around his horns, throw him, and “hogtie”’
him by fastening his four feet together while the cow-pony at the
other end of the rope holds the steer helpless on the ground. And it
must all be done under two minutes.
But, from the standpoint of individual muscular prowess and sheer
human grit, ‘“bulldogging” is the showiest event of all. The steer
is driven out of a chute, and he emerges much as a limited mail train
comes out of atunnel. They give him about thirty feet start, and then
the man starts after him on a horse running like a scared jack-rabbit.
The horse draws alongside and the man leans over, hooks an arm
around the steer’s horn, and slides from the saddle. The horse goes
on, so does the steer for a few jumps, the man dragging through the
dust and acting as a brake. Finally the two come to rest. Then the
man reaches for the steer’s nose and, clasping his hands around it
with the horn between his arms, leans backward and tries to throw the
animal. Sometimes the steer shakes him loose, sometimes it whirls
and tosses him, but we have seen a man bring down an animal in
seventeen seconds from the time he started after him. They call it
bulldogging, but it’s the greatest wrestling in the world.
And let this be clear: there is no cruelty to animals. The broken
bones—and necks too—are the lot of two-legged contestants. Not
an animal this year was injured. It is the men and the women who
take the big risks and get the real hurts.
“Let ’er buck!”
“Ride ’em, cowboy! ”’
Those cries of the Round-Up echo still in our ears, and the memory
No. 17] The Strategy of Locating a Railroad 59
of all that goes with them is a magnet that inevitably will draw us
again westward to this courageous competition—an epic of sports-
manship so essentially American.
George Palmer Putnam, The Pendleton Round-Up, in Outlook, October 25, 1922
(New York), CXXXII, 330-331 passim.
—o
17. The Strategy of Locating a Railroad (1925)
BY CHARLES H. MARKHAM
Markham, who died in 1927, began his railway career as a section laborer; at
his death he was President of the Illinois Central Railroad.—For bibliography on
Railroads, see No. 84 below.
EOGRAPHICALLY, the Illinois Central System is located
almost in the heart of the North American continent.
The fourteen states oï the Mississippi Valley in which it operates
embrace one-third of the total population of the United States. It
connects many of the great industrial and commercial centers of the
Mississippi Valley, including Chicago, the second largest city on the
continent, and in many respects the leading commercial city of the
world; St. Louis, the great manufacturing and distributing center;
New Orleans, the second largest port in the country; Birmingham, the
“Pittsburgh of the South”; Memphis, the world’s leading hardwood
lumber market; Omaha, the manufacturing and commercial metrop-
olis of Nebraska, and such other important cities as Sioux City, Sioux
Falls, Fort Dodge, Waterloo, Dubuque, Rockford, Madison, Peoria,
Bloomington, Springfield, Indianapolis, Decatur, Evansville, East
St. Louis, Louisville, Paducah, Jackson, Tenn., Jackson, Miss., Vicks-
burg, Natchez, Baton Rouge, Hattiesburg and Gulfport.
Unlike many railroads which have to depend on single crops or
industries for most of their tonnage and therefore suffer seriously when
those crops or industries meet with reverses, the Illinois Central
System traverses a region the agricultural, mineral, lumbering and
manufacturing production of which is highly diversified. It is conse-
quently little affected by the failure of any one harvest or the slowing
down of any one industry. The fourteen states in which the Illinois
Central System operates embrace only 26 per cent of the total land
60 Sections and New States [1925
area of the United States, but they produce 34 per cent of the nation’s
bituminous coal, 34 per cent of its lumber, 38 per cent of its cotton,
4g per cent of its tobacco, 69 per cent of its corn, 33 per cent of its
wheat, 64 per cent of its oats, 66 per cent of its rice and 46 per cent of
its livestock. They contain 37 per cent of the country’s railway mile-
age, or one-eighth of the total railway mileage of the world.
The wide range of climate traversed by the Illinois Central System
has an important bearing on the traffic which flows over its lines. The
northernmost extremity of the system is at Albert Lea, Minn., north
of the 43d parallel, with a mean temperature in January of about 14°
and in July of about 82°, and an annual precipitation of about 27
inches. So wide is the climatic variation that while the northern part
of the railroad is blanketed in snow and ice and experiencing sub-zero
weather, fields of strawberries and vegetables are ripening under the
warm Louisiana sun at the southern end of the line, and peach trees are
in bloom along the balmy Gulf Coast of Southern Mississippi. Many
of the agricultural and forest products of the South are native to that
region and cannot be grown successfully in the North, and many of
the hardier agricultural products of the North do not thrive in the
sub-tropical climate of the Southern states. Hence the interchange of
Southern products, such as Southern pine lumber, cotton and cotton-
seed products, winter vegetables, fruits, tobacco, berries, sugar, rice
and pecans, for the grains, packing house products and hardier fruits
and vegetables of the North furnishes the railroad with a large and
important part of its tonnage.
The advantages of being a pioneer railroad probably more than
offset the disadvantages. The Illinois Central System reached most
of what now are the populous centers of its territory when they
were scarcely more than settlements. It was the forerunner of hun-
dreds of towns and cities along its lines. Naturally, therefore, it
acquired the advantage of exceedingly favorable locations in many
of these centers which it would be difficult if not impossible to ac-
quire today.
At Chicago, for example, the Illinois Central terminal occupies a
location along the Lake front immediately adjacent to the “Loop”
business district, a property that could not be obtained by a railroad
today at any price. When this right-of-way was acquired, Chicago
had a population of 30,000. . . .
No. 17] The Strategy of Locating a Railroad 6I
Another pronounced geographical advantage which the Illinois
Central has is that of traversing the comparatively level country of the
Mississippi Valley. Not only did the level topography and light
timber growth through this territory render construction easier and
less expensive than would have been the case through a more rugged
country, but it enabled the construction of a straighter and smoother
roadway. Ninety per cent of the original road in Illinois was straight,
and the few curves were of such wide radius as to render them an
almost negligible factor in the operation of trains. The long and steep
grades that have to be overcome on nearly all the Eastern and Western
railroads are not so great a factor on the Illinois Central System. The
advantages of its comparatively straight and level track enable the
operation of long, heavy trains at a much lower tractive effort than
is required on the majority of railroads.
Seventy-one per cent of all land in the fourteen states in which the
Illinois Central System operates is in farms compared with 43 per cent
in the thirty-four other states of the Union. In 1923 these fourteen
states furnished more than 40 per cent of the total agricultural pro-
duction of the United States. It is therefore manifest that the Illinois
Central System, traversing this rich agricultural region, carries a vast
traffic of agricultural products. Although the Illinois Central System
embraces only about one-thirty-eighth of the railway mileage of the
country, one in every twenty-four carloads of agricultural products
handled by the Class 1 railroads of the United States in 1924 originated
on the Illinois Central System.
When the Illinois Central Railroad was projected, except for the
lead and zinc mines of northwestern Illinois and southwestern Wis-
consin, the mineral resources of the Mississippi Valley were entirely
undeveloped. Coal had not come into extensive use as fuel. In 1855
the mining of 20,000 tons of coal in the vicinity of LaSalle and Du-
Quoin, Ill., for domestic consumption in those and neighboring towns
led the president of the Illinois Central in his annual report to make
the prophetic statement that he was “fully persuaded that coal
traffic would eventually become one of the most important elements
of profit to the road.” By means of railway transportation the coal
mines of Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky found markets at Chicago,
St. Louis, Indianapolis, Louisville, Memphis and other populous
industrial centers. As the territory developed and the railroads helped
62 Sections and New States [1925
to create markets, such commodities as sand, gravel, stone, clay and
fluorspar came to contribute substantially to the system’s freight
tonnage. In rọrọ there were 3,868 producing mines and quarries,
employing 254,234 workmen in the fourteen states of the Mississippi
Valley in which the Illinois Central System operates, and their total
production that year was valued at $660,000,000, or 21 per cent of
the total value of all mine and quarry products in the United States.
In 1924 the Ilinois Central System transported 25,703,590 tons of
mineral products, approximately two-thirds of which was coal.
The strategic position of the Illinois Central System in relation
to the lumber industry is at once apparent. The United States uses
about two-fifths of the total world consumption of wood and wood
products. Not many years ago the states of Michigan, Minnesota
and Wisconsin produced a surplus of forest products, and because
of the short haul they were the principal sources of supply for the
consuming states of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Ohio and Missouri.
Today, however, with the exception of Maine and New Hampshire,
every state north of the Ohio and Potomac rivers and east of the
Rocky Mountains, as well as Kentucky, consumes more lumber than
it produces, while Louisiana, Mississippi, eastern Texas, Arkansas
and Alabama form the principal lumber-producing region and the
main source of surplus lumber supply east of the Rocky Mountains.
During 1922 the fourteen states in which the Illinois Central System
operates produced 10,853,000,000 feet of lumber, or 34.5 per cent of
the total lumber production of the United States. The four states
of Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas and Alabama milled 8,494,000,000
feet, or 26.9 per cent of the total production in the country. There-
fore, the Illinois Central System, with its network of lines traversing
the principal lumber-producing regions of Mississippi, affording
direct connections with lumber-producing points in Louisiana,
Alabama and Arkansas and serving directly the great markets of
the Central West, is most advantageously located as a lumber
eatfie® is! . N
The vast agricultural, mineral and lumber resources of the states
of the Mississippi Valley, their excellent transportation facilities,
their central location with respect to population and accessibility of
fuel and raw materials, have given the territory traversed by the
lines of the Illinois Central System every advantage in manufacturing.
No. 17] The Strategy of Locating a Railroad 63
and the phenomenal industrial growth of the Mississippi Valley
region has contributed greatly to the economic strength of the rail-
Tondano
At New Orleans, the second largest port in the United States in
total tonnage of exports and imports and total net tonnage of shipping
engaged in foreign trade, the Illinois Central System owns extensive
docks, elevators and warehouses, equipped with modern loading and
unloading machinery.
The recent acquisition of the Gulf & Ship Island Railroad has added
a second Gulf port to the Illinois Central System. At Gulfport, the
only deep-water harbor on the Mississippi Coast, the system now owns
a pier more than a mile in length and a wharf several hundred feet
in length, where cargoes are loaded and unloaded directly between
cars and ships. Gulfport is one of the leading lumber and naval
stores ports on the Gulf Coast.
The Ocean Steamship Company, a subsidiary of the Central of
Georgia Railway Company (which is, as noted, a part of the greater
Illinois Central System), owns commodious marine terminals at
Savannah, Ga., the largest naval stores port of the country and the
third largest cotton port in the world.
A fourth deep-water port on the Illinois Central System is at Baton
Rouge, on the lower Mississippi River. Baton Rouge is now a port
of entry under United States customs regulations. . .
In common with other latitudinal railroads engaged in the trans-
portation of transcontinental tonnage, the Illinois Central System’s
line between Chicago and Omaha suffers from canal competition,
but new traffic has developed to and from the Panama Canal over the
longitudinal lines of the system. The Panama Canal may therefore
well be considered an asset to the Illinois Central System, because of
its geographical location, although a liability to the latitudinal trans-
continental lines. As the trade of the United States continues to grow
with the increasing industrialization of its people, the growth of its
population, and the development of its interest in foreign markets,
the Panama Canal will become of increasing importance as a factor
in the business of the Illinois Central; an importance that even today
is significant, and of consideration in the policies of the system. . .
Charles H. Markham, The Illinois Central System, in Economic Geography (Wor-
cester, Clark University, 1926), II, 4-15 passim.
CHAPTER IV—IMMIGRATION AND RACE
ELEMENTS
18. Landing in New York (1901)
BY JAMES B. CONNOLLY
Connolly served in the infantry in the Spanish War, later in U. S. Navy. Corre-
spondent of Collier’s in Mexico in 1914 and in European waters in 1918. He is the
author of some exceptionally good books and articles about the sea.
T ten o’clock in the evening the big French liner from Havre
came to anchor in the harbor of New York, and six hundred
immigrants, Armenian, Greek, Turk, Italian, French, what not,
craned over her rail to look on the fascinating lights of the immense
city of their new land. They were told that the ship would move no
further that night, and that it would be well to go below and get
some sleep; but they paid no attention, and dawn found them still
there, wakefully gazing.
Not until the last night-light died out did these watchers go below,
and then it was to hurry bags and bundles on deck. At five o’clock
every one of them was up on his toes ready to step ashore at the
word, but it was seven o’clock before they were allowed to move,
and then it was to make ready for the doctors, who had just climbed
aboard.
Down one long gangway and up the other we were marched—cit-
izens and foreigners alike; nationality made no difference where all
were mere “steerage.” At the rate of forty to the minute we went
by the doctor and his staff, who stood in the waist and reviewed us.
As some of us in approaching failed to uncover, the ship’s man ad-
dressed us; “Your chapeaux, messieurs, your chapeaux.” We did
not understand, ‘‘For the hair diseases,” he said.
So we doffed our chapeaux, although it looked ridiculously like
a salute to the doctors. And they must have had miraculous eyes
64
No. 18] Landing in New York 65
if they detected any but the most rampant disease by the brief looks
they gave to the immigrants’ heads.
After this inspection the steerage dragged up its very last bags
and bundles and chests. Six hundred of them there were, and with
all their belongings they camped on deck. They made a pretty
tight fit for one deck, and on one deck they had to stay. Later, it
was like prying the first block out of a square of paving to get them
started.
It was a blistering morning in July, and for two hours we sizzled
in the blaze, until at last some blessed body up ahead said we might
move. We moved, at first with glacial slowness, but in a little while
more rapidly. By the time one little bunch reached the head of the
gangplank, we were moving beyond all question. The people half a
dozen numbers ahead of us were bumping down the runway like cakes
of ice down a chute, and yet a man said, “Hurry! hurry!”
Cakes of ice may be skidded with speed when the runs are well
greased, but they do not always stop gracefully. A band of Armenians,
with bundles behind and before them, went clattering before us down
the cleated runway like men thrown down-stairs.
Two men at the foot “kept tab.” One had to use a baseball um-
pire’s indicator for his count, but the other, a greater brain, thought
that he needed no mechanical aid to keep his reckoning. He counted
us by a system of fours; but presently the struggling throng confused
him and he grew wrathy. His system broke down when his companion
counted one of us as number three hundred and sixty-eight, and he had
only reached number three hundred and sixty-four.
On the dock it was a noisy assemblage. Here was where Volapiik
or any other universal language would have been worth everybody’s
knowing. These friendless people stood helplessly about, waiting for
somebody to come and tell them what to do. Officials who might have
made things a bit easier for them seemed to prefer to add to their
bewilderment. Some that sought aid were waved away with arrogant
indifference. “We’ll get around to you,” was a reply that bore not
the slightest relation to the timorous question. All the Jacks in office
scorned these poor people, and they were made to feelit. To the com-
mand of any loud-voiced truckman they jumped aside like rabbits, and
beneath the mere look of anything in uniform they shrank like mice.
A lifeless-looking man behind a small stand-up desk was registering
66 Immigration and Race Elements [z901
the lucky ones with “‘papers”—the naturalized Americans who had
been home for a visit. He might have been registering ordinary
cattle of no pedigree. His ambition, seemingly, was to be regarded
as a man who could be flustered by nothing on top of this earth. He
only moved his fingers to fill in blank lines on one big sheet and a lot
of little slips. His jaws seemed made to chew tobacco—he did not
move them to speak.
Some citizens, native born, American by every word and action,
approached this impassive creature, saying: “‘ We are American citizens
who have come third class. Can we be passed out?”
“ Passport? ”
“No; but if ú
“ Any sworn statements that you are American citizens?”
“No. We did not anticipate anything like this. If you will look
atthese
“Don’t want to leok. If you have no regular papers stand aside.”
An Italian who could just say “Yes,” “No,” and “Feeladelfy”
then presented his stamped credentials, and was passed out. Another,
who had no credentials, stood ready to make affidavit that he was
born in America sixty years ago. He had to get an interpreter to tell
his story. His dismissal was as abrupt as ours.
The great body had no papers, had no hope of any shorter cut to
liberty than by way of Ellis Island, and so waited patiently with
their packs beside them. They never wandered far away from their
packs. By and by they were told the inspector wished them to get in
line and be ready for him. They hurried to arrange themselves in a
row with their bundles opened up. In about an hour the inspector
walked along the line, chalking his initials about as fast as he could
step from one to the other. There was little suspicion of valuable
stuffs concealed there.
After a time we learned that to get out we had only to swear that
we were born in America and were citizens. Then we “went for”
the man behind the desk, who could have attended to us before,
and he took our abuse as, doubtless, he would have taken our praise—
without changing a muscle. Given our slips, we hurried out of that
darkened dock, out into the free sunshine of West Street. There we
took a good long look at the United States. Travelling in immigrant
fashion was all right after one had done with it.
No. 19] Our Italian Laborers 67
When we left, the first batch of our fellow voyagers were being
marched on the Ellis Island barge. We saw a bunch of them later—
after they were clear of the Immigration Bureau. It was in the shadow
of Castle Garden. They were being driven away by a boisterous man
of their own kind, who was talking to them like a jolly father. Per-
haps he was making clear to them that now they were recognized
fixtures in this land of promise, and that all their troubles were past.
James B. Connolly, in Youth’s Companion, March 14, 1901 (Boston), iii after 136.
tg. Our Italian Laborers (1901)
BY JACOB A. RIIS
Riis, a native of Denmark, came to the United States as a young man, worked
as a police-court reporter in New York City, and interested himself in the problems
of the tenement district. He was responsible for many reforms, as he has already
told in his books, A Ten Years’ War; An Account of the Battle with the Slum in New
York (Boston, 1900), and his autobiography, The Making of an American (New
York, 1902).—Bibliography: Jacob A. Riis; A Sketch of His Life and Work; Theo-
dore Roosevelt, “Reformed through Social Work” in Fortnightly Review (1901),
730-747-
VER in the hollow by the railroad-track, a little way from my
home, stand two huts, if the term can be applied to structures
having almost no sides, but consisting mainly of roofs oddly made of
old boards, shingles and broken branches thrown down by a great
storm that swept the country in the early fall. From the roof of one
hut a crazy stovepipe sticks out; the fireplace of the other is just
outside, where a door should have been, and there the occupants
were busy cooking something in a pan.
At first sight I thought the huts harbored tramps who had halted
on their annual migration southward, but before I caught sight of
the men I knew by their chatter that they were Italian laborers
employed in repairing the road-bed near by. The thicket was their
kitchen, parlor and living-room. They might have found quarters
much worse on a sunny day.
Soon after the men camped there thieves made a raid on our village.
First our hen-coops suffered, then our silver drawers. There was
68 Immigration and Race Elements [901
great excitement for a season, and public indignation, in its search
for a victim, hovered for a while about the settlement in the hollow.
That was a mistake, as the event proved, and I am glad to say I had
no share init. I knew the Italian too well for that.
He is not a thief. His boy may, does often enough, become cor-
rupted by the city slum and its idleness, but with his immigrant
father the police have rarely any concern. Even the bandit from
across the sea works peacefully enough with pick and shovel here.
It is only when the slum swallows him up from the moment of his
coming and claims him for its own, or when his angry passions are
excited by his Sunday game of cards that he falls back into his old
evil ways.
The Mulberry Bend in New York is the great market where the
padrone finds his countrymen just come over the sea, waiting to be
hired and shipped in squads to the jobs that are waiting. The padrone
is the middleman who knows what every big contractor is doing,
even what he is thinking of doing, and is ever ready to enlist from a
dozen to a thousand men with shovels, and ship them by the next
train to wherever they may be needed. The “banker” in the Bend
is the padrone’s backer, who furnishes the capital to run the
“business,” which begins as soon as the men are shipped.
The contractor houses them sometimes, in barracks of rough boards
put up for the occasion; sometimes, if the job is on the railroad and
is not to last long, in a couple of old freight-cars side-tracked as near
the job as may be. A few cars can hold a great many Italian navvies,
for they pack well.
It may happen that they are quartered in old barns or farmhouses,
the owners of which are willing to let them for ready money. Into
them swarm the swarthy Italians by scores, stowing themselves in
every nook and cranny from vellar to attic, and away up in the
cockloft.
As near to the men as may be, the padrone opens his store, and
stocks it with macaroni and such other simple viands as his customers
require. Once or twice a week he lays in a supply of stale bread,
their chief food. It is cheap and it is healthy, if not exactly palatable.
Thus he makes a double profit on his men, for each of them pays
him a regular percentage on his pay for getting him the job. These
items together, small for the individual but large in the aggregate,
No. 19] Our Italian Laborers 69
are enough to make the padrone and his banker rich in a few busy
years.
Their client, the navvy, is not envious. He is willing that they
shall make a good thing of him for themselves, so long as he has his
share. His thrift insures his own prosperity. It is a common observa-
tion on works where Italians are employed in numbers that with
their dollar and quarter a day they draw more cash at the end of the
month than the highly paid engineers. The reason is simple; they
save rigidly.
Stale bread and flour are cheap; they make their macaroni as often
as they buy it readymade; the woods for a mile around furnish their
fuel; field, meadow and swamp contribute to their larder in a way
truly amazing to one used only to civilized city life.
The camp-fire is lighted against the bluff when the evening shades
begin to fall. A hole dug in the bank horizontally serves as the
fireplace; another scooped out over it, straight up, makes the chimney.
When the kitchen is ready, the pot is boiling in no time.
To it the men foraging after their day’s work bring what they find;
some carry fagots for the fire from the thicket, others bring by the
armful greens that no one of that neighborhood thought of as good
to eat. Young dandelions, young milkweed, sour sorrel and the weed
called “lamb’s quarters” are delicacies. A slice of bacon or anything
else that comes handy gives a flavor to the mess—a dead bird, a
land-turtle, or even a mud-turtle. It all goes into the pot. Italian
navvies are “death on turtles.” The result of it all is a broth not
unpalatable to one who has the courage to taste it, and which they
swallow with great gusto.
The meal over and their few chores done, the men squat by the
fires for a game of cards and a smoke. Generally some one among
them has a guitar, perhaps a harp, at least an accordion, and the
echoes of the summer night are awakened by the sweetly seductive
strains of “Santa Lucia” or some Sicilian love-song.
The fierce-looking men in their red flannel shirts, wide open at the
sunburned throat, with the firelight playing upon their dark faces,
make a striking figure suggestive enough of savage mountaineers
fresh from a raid on weakling lowlanders and their wealth; but what-
ever was their trade abroad, here it is honest. Even the farmer’s
hen-coops are safe, if the turtles in his swamp-lot are not.
70 Immigration and Race Elements [190r
Midnight finds them bundled in their barracks, on straw or on the
solid planks, usually packed close together. Rude bunks are nailed
up two tiers high if there is room, and twenty or thirty sleep where
Americans would see space for two. In the space left by the bunks,
lines are strung and their clothes hung up to dry.
Once a week the camp takes a wash. On Saturday evening all
go to the near-by stream, where the men soak their shirts while they sit
smoking on the bank. The most venturesome jump in with clothes
on, and wash them in that way, but bathing is not popular among
them as a sport. As a sanitary measure it is not even dreamed of.
The soaked clothes, wrung out on the bank, are spread on the roof
of their barracks over night, or hung out to dry on the next tree, and
are fit for Sunday wear in the morning, there being no church to
demand an extra polishing-up.
If it were not for his manner of spending Sunday or Sunday after-
noon, the Italian would be an ideal navvy. He does not go off carous-
ing, is hardy and not afraid of work. Sunday morning he manages
to put in mending his clothes or cobbling in camp, if he has not a
wife in the Bend whom he goes to see. But as the afternoon wears
on in idleness, the gaming that is his besetting vice tempts him, and
then, with the darkness, the padrone’s profits are likely to be curtailed
by a general fight in which knives are trumps.
The history of the building of the aqueduct dams, the ship-canal
and other great works of like character near New York City records
many such bloody fights, often over a few wretched pennies. The
police are usually in time to carry out the dead, rarely to prevent
murder. In spite of this, the Italian navvy is, as a rule, a man of
peace as he is one of hard work, and a most important person in the
accomplishment of the great enterprises that mark the progress of
our country.
Although he works for less than the imperious Irishman, he manages
to make his wage go vastly farther. At the end of his job, when camp
is broken in the late fall, he goes away with his pockets lined with gold,
perhaps to the city to watch for another job, perhaps over the ocean
to buy a farm or a hillside vineyard at home. His shovel, his loaf of
stale bread and the umbrella that were his inseparable companions
here are left behind.
He sets sail in a brand-new corduroy suit, with a heavy silver chain
No. 20] A Self-Made Negro ga
to his watch, to return, if he does not settle among his own, with his
wife and little ones to make his home with us for good; showing thus
in the best of all ways that he appreciates the advantages of his new-
found freedom, and is going to try the best of it according to his light.
Jacob A. Riis, in Youth’s Companion, January 17, 1901 (Boston), 111.
20. A Self-Made Negro (1910)
BY EMMETT J. SCOTT AND LYMAN BEECHER STOWE (1016)
Scott was at one time Booker T. Washington’s private secretary; he was secre-
tary of Tuskegee Institute and later of Howard University, both schools for negroes.
Stowe, grandson of Harriet Beecher Stowe, is the author (with his father) of Harriet
Beecher Stowe—The Story of Her Life (1911); (with W. R. George) of Made and
Remade (1912); (with Dr. J. Goricar) of The Inside Story of Austro-German Intrigue
(1919). Booker Washington wrote on negro problems. Some of his more im-
portant works are: Sowing and Reaping (Boston, 1900); The Story of my Life and
Work (1900); Up from Slavery (1901); The Future of the American Negro (1902);
Character Building (1903); Working with the Hands (1904); Tuskegee and Its People
(1905); Putting the Most into Life (1906); Life of Frederick Douglass (1907); The
Negro in Business (1907); The Story of the Negro (1909).—Bibliography: See B. F.
Riley, The Life and Times of Booker T. Washington (New York, 1916).
OOKER WASHINGTON was always emphasizing the necessity
of better conditions right here and now instead of in a distant
future or in heaven. He was constantly combating the tendency in
his people—a tendency common to all people but naturally particu-
larly strong in those having a heritage of slavery—to substitute the
anticipated bliss of a future life for effective efforts to improve the
conditions of this present life. He was always telling them to put
their energies into societies for the preservation of health and improve-
ment of living conditions, instead of into the too numerous and popu-
lar sick benefit and death benefit organizations.
At the next stop of the party Mr. Washington was introduced to
the assembled townspeople by a graduate of Tuskegee Institute, who
was one of their leading citizens and most successful farmers. In this
talk he urged the people to get more land and keep it and to grow
something besides cotton. He said they should not lean upon others
and should not go to town on Saturdays to “draw upon” the mer-
72 Immigration and Race Elements [r910
chants, but should stay at home and “draw every day from their
own soil corn, peas, beans, and hogs.” He urged the men to give their
wives more time to work around the house and to raise vegetables.
(This, of course, instead of requiring them to work in the fields with
the men as is so common.) He urged especially that they take their
wives into their confidence and make them their partners as well as
their companions. He assured them that if they took their wives into
partnership they would accumulate more and get along better in every
way.
There was no advice given by him more constantly or insistently
in speaking to the plain people of his race, whether in country or city,
than this injunction to the men to take their wives into tneir confidence
and make them their partners. He recognized that the home was the
basis of all progress and civilization for his race, as well as all other
races, and that the wife and mother is primarily the conservator of the
home.
One of the stops of the trip was at a little hamlet called Damascus.
Here, in characteristic fashion, he told the people how much richer
they were in soil and all natural advantages than were the inhabitants
of the original Damascus in the Holy Land. He then argued that hav-
ing these great natural advantages, much was to be expected of them,
etc. Like all great preachers, teachers, and leaders of men he seized
upon the names, incidents, and conditions immediately about him and
from them drew lessons of fundamental import and universal applica-
tion.
The efforts of the Negro farmers on these trips to get a word of
approval from their great leader were often pathetic. One old man
had a good breed of pigs of which he was particularly proud. He con-
trived to be found feeding them beside the road just as the great man
and his party were passing. The simple ruse succeeded. Mr. Wash-
ington and his companions stopped and every one admired the proud
and excited old man’s pigs. And then after the pigs had been duly
admired, he led them to a rough plank table upon which he had dis-
played in tremulous anticipation of this dramatic moment a huge
pumpkin, some perfectly developed ears of corn, and a lusty cabbage.
After these objects had also been admired the old man decoyed the
party into the little whitewashed cottage where his wife had her hour
of triumph in displaying her jars of preserves, pickles, cans of vege-
No. 20] A Self-Made Negro 73
tables, dried fruits, and syrup together with quilts and other needle-
work all carefully arranged for this hoped-for inspection.
The basic teaching of all these tours was: “Make your own little
heaven right here and now. Do it by putting business methods into
your farming, by growing things in your garden the year around, by
building and keeping attractive and comfortable homes for your
children so they will stay at home and not go to the cities, by keeping
your bodies and your surroundings clean, by staying in one place, by
getting a good teacher and a good preacher, by building a good school
aud church, by letting your wife be your partner in all you do, by
keeping out of debt, by cultivating friendly relations with your neigh-
bors both white and black.”
Mr. Washington was constantly bringing up in the Tuskegee faculty
meetings cases of distress among the colored people of the county,
which he had personally discovered while off hunting or riding, and
planning ways and means to relieve them. Apparently it never
occurred to him that technically, at least, the fate of these poor per-
sons was not his affair nor that of his school. At one such meeting
he told of having come upon while hunting a tumbledown cabin in the
woods, within it a half-paralyzed old Negro obviously unable to care
for his simple wants. Mr. Washington had stopped, built a fire in
his stove, and otherwise made him comfortable temporarily, but some
provision for the old man’s care must be made at once. One of the
teachers knew about the old man and stated that he had such an ugly
temper that he had driven off his wife, son, and daughter who had
until recently lived with him and taken care of him. The young
teacher seemed to feel that the old man had brought his troubles upon
his own head and so deserved little sympathy. Mr. Washington
would not for a moment agree to this. He replied that if the old fellow
was so unfortunate as to have a bad temper as well as his physical in-
firmities that was no reason why he should be allowed to suffer priva-
tion. He delegated one of the teachers to look up the old man’s
family at once and see if they could be prevailed upon to support
him and to report at the next meeting what had been arranged. In
the meantime he would send some one out to the cabin daily to take
him food and attend to his wants.
At another faculty meeting he brought up the plight of an old
woman who was about to be evicted from her little shack on the out-
74 Immigration and Race Elements [1913
skirts of the town because of her inability to pay the nominal rent
which she was charged. He arranged to have her rent paid out of a
sum of money which he always had included in the school budget
for the relief of such cases. In such ways he was constantly impress-
ing upon his associates the idea that was ever a mainspring of his
own life—namely, that it was always and everywhere the duty of the
more fortunate to help the less fortunate.
Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe, Booker T. Washington, Builder of a
Civilization (New York, Doubleday Page, 1916), 139-143.
—o
21. The Japanese Problem (1913)
BY PROFESSOR FREDERIC AUSTIN OGG (1918)
Ogg is Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin.—Bibliog-
raphy: George H. Blakeslee, Japan and Japanese-American Relations; K. K.
Kawakami, The Real Japanese Question; H. A. Millis, The Japanese Problem in
the United States; P. J. Treat, Japan and the United States.
ie HE people of the far West had long believed that their
section of the country was in danger of being flooded with
Asiatics, and that unless repressive steps were taken they would be
saddled with a permanent race problem like the negro question in the
South. Exclusion acts wrung from Congress in 1880-1884 were a
sufficient safeguard against the Chinese. By 1895, however, high
wages began to attract Japanese and Korean laborers, many of whom
reached the mainland after a sojourn in Hawaii. In ro00 there were
in the coast states only 18,269 Japanese; but after 1903 the influx rose,
and native laborers and shopkeepers seemed likely to be displaced on
a large scale by orientals. Japanese capitalists, too, were seeking a
footing in important industries. In this new form, the “yellow peril”
stirred the coast communities profoundly. Organized labor set up a
cry for exclusion; and the political leaders, the press, and a large part
of the public gave hearty support. Race prejudice played its part,
but the mainspring of the protest was the fear of economic competi-
tion.
On October 11, 1906, the board of education of San Francisco cast
a brand into the tinder by passing a resolution that thereafter all Chi-
No. 21] The Japanese Problem vis
nese, Japanese, and Korean pupils should be given instruction in an
“oriental” school, and not, as previously, in the ordinary schools.
Coming at a time when Japanese pride was more than usually exalted,
this action was keenly resented. The Tokio authorities made inquiries,
and then demanded that Japanese residents in California be protected
in the full enjoyment of the rights guaranteed them by the treaty of
1894. In 1907 a tentative settlement was reached in a “gentleman’s
agreement” to the effect that San Francisco should admit to the ordi-
nary schools oriental children not over sixteen years of age, while the
Japanese authorities should withhold passports from laborers bound
for the United States, except returning residents and members of their
families. An order of President Roosevelt, March 14, 1907, issued
under authority of a new immigration act, further restrained the immi-
gration of oriental laborers; and within two years the number of
Japanese annually entering the country was reduced to a tenth of its
former proportions. February 24, 1911, the United States Senate
ratified a new treaty of commerce and navigation with Japan, which
was accompanied by a Japanese note to the effect that the Mikado’s
government was “fully prepared to maintain with equal effectiveness
the limitation and control which they have for the past three years
exercised in regulation of emigration of laborers to the United States.”
The real issue in 1906-1907 was not school attendance, but the
right of the Japanese to migrate to the Pacific coast states and to
enjoy there the same privileges as other aliens. Agitation therefore
continued, and in 1913 it bore fruit in a bill introduced in the Cali-
fornia legislature prohibiting the holding of land, through either
purchase or lease, by aliens ineligible to citizenship under United
States law. Several states, including New York and Texas, had laws
unconditionally prohibiting ownership of real property by aliens.
The Tokio authorities objected to the California proposal, however,
on the ground that it was aimed solely at the Japanese (who under the
naturalization laws were ineligible to citizenship), and that it was a
discrimination in violation of the treaty of 1911. After asking in vain
that the measure be modified, President Wilson sent Secretary Bryan
to Sacramento to explain to the governor and legislature the views of
the officials at Washington. Nevertheless, the legislature passed a
substitute measure, known as the Webb alien landholding bill, which
received the governor’s signature May 10, 1913.
76 Immigration and Race Elements [1913
On its face, the bill passed was less offensive than its original, for
it did not contain the phrase ‘‘ineligible to citizenship,” which had been
the basis of the Japanese protest. The real object was attained, how-
ever, by the provision that, whereas aliens eligible to citizenship
should be allowed to acquire and hold land on the same terms as
citizens, all other aliens should have only such landholding rights as
should be guaranteed to them by treaty. No treaty with Japan con-
ferred the right of land ownership; so that Japanese residents of the
state, while continuing to be capable of owning real property used for
residence or commercial purposes, and while permitted to lease land
for a term not exceeding three years, were henceforth disqualified to
become land-owners. Existing holdings were not affected.
The law was drawn to minimize legal objections. Its effect, how-
ever, was to deny to Japanese residents rights which they, in common
with other aliens, had hitherto possessed; and on this ground the Tokio
government renewed its protest. The State Department urged that
no rights were denied, and that, in any event, the courts were open
for the adjudication of the question. But the Japanese authorities
preferred to consider the situation on the plane of international and
inter-racial honor and fair play; for the real source of their dissatis-
faction was the stigma which was felt to have been placed upon the
Japanese as a people by the refusal of the United States to admit
Japanese settlers to citizenship.
The suggestion of a new treaty was eventually dropped; and after
a fruitless exchange of notes, the controversy (overshadowed, from
1914, by the European war) languished. That in the course of time
it would be revived, nobody doubted. Indeed, in the early months
of 1917 the legislatures of Oregon, Idaho, and one or two other Pacific
states debated land-holding measures resembling that which brought
the difficulty to a head in California.
Certain facts lent the situation an ominous aspect. Japan and the
United States must always confront each other across the Pacific.
Economic competition between them was certain to increase. An
outlet for surplus population was for Japan a growing necessity. The
Japanese are a proud people, quick to resent any hint that they are
an inferior race. They are extraordinarily polite, and they expect
unfailing courtesy from those who undertake to deal with them as
equals. The events of 1906-1907 and 1913 revealed in both countries
No. 21] The Japanese Problem a7
a jingo press, as well as a tendency to indiscreet and violent acts. Not
a few sober-minded Americans were convinced that Japan, having
triumphed first over China, then over Russia, had chosen the United
States as her third great antagonist; and that through conquests in
Latin America, or in some way, she would bring on a conflict whenever
the time seemed ripe. Nervous persons recalled that never since the
modernization of her armies had the empire suffered defeat.
Fortunately, there were offsets to these causes of alarm. The
official attitude of each government toward the other was always
correct; diplomatic language was careful and courteous. For a decade
the ‘“gentleman’s agreement” was faithfully carried out, and it
yielded every immediate result that could have been attained by
statutes or by treaty. The situation was saved by the fact that the
Japanese plans for national development admitted of no heavy
emigration to the United States; the end in view was rather coloniza-
tion in Korea and elsewhere, under the Japanese flag. Furthermore,
the United States was not alone in seeking to prevent the entrance
of orientals; Australia and other British dominions had gone even
further. If the country could discover some means of attaining its
purpose without branding the Japanese as an inferior people, there
was no reason—so far, at all events, as the immigration question was
concerned—why earlier friendliness should not be restored. The old
relation of mentor and pupil, however, could never be revived; for
Japan had outgrown the need of tutelage.
Frederic Austin Ogg, National Progress [American Nation, XX VII] (New York,
Harper’s, 1918), 307-312.
78 Immigration and Race Elements [1924
22. Our New Immigration Policy (1924)
BY PROFESSOR ROBERT DE COURCY WARD
Ward, an eminent American meteorologist and professor of that science at
Harvard University, has long taken a deep interest in immigration problems.—
Bibliography: J. W. Jenks and W. J. Lauck, The Immigration Problem (N. Y.,
1922); Gino Speranza, Race or Nation: the Conflict of Divided Loyalties (Indianapolis,
1925); H. P. Fairchild, The Melting Pot Mistake (Boston, 1926); R. L. Garis, Im-
migration Restriction (N. Y., 1927); Madison Grant and C. S. Davison, editors,
The Founders of the Republic on Immigration, Naturalization and Aliens (N. Y.,
1928); E. R. Lewis, America: Nation or Confusion (N. Y., 1928).
OR a round hundred years it was a national ideal that the
United States should be the asylum for the poor and the oppressed
of every land. This very early came to be known as the “traditional”’
American attitude towards immigration. Curiously enough, there
has always been a fundamental error in the popular conception of
this tradition. This noble ideal of a refuge, open to all, had its roots
in economic conditions far more than in any altruistic spirit or world
philanthropy. For many decades the country was very sparsely
settled. There was abundant free land. Labor was scarce. The
number of immigrants was still very small, and nearly all of them
were sturdy pioneers, essentially homogeneous and readily assimilated.
There was, therefore, little need to worry about any immigration
“problems,” and it was comforting to the consciences of our ancestors
to keep the doors wide open. .
During the last decade of the nineteenth century a distinct change
in public opinion began to manifest itself. Of slow growth at first,
the new views soon spread more and more rapidly until they have
finally been embodied in the new immigration law. . . . The reason
for the gradual reversal of the earlier American policy of free immigra-
tion to one of steadily increasing restriction was the very marked
change in the general character of immigration which began in the
decade 1880-1890. It is significant that in the period 1871-1880
the “old” immigration from northern and western Europe amounted
to slightly over 2,000,000 persons while the “new” immigration,
from southern and eastern Europe and near Asia, numbered only
180,000. In the years 1897-1914, the period immediately preceding
the war, the “old” contributed about 3,000,000 while the “new”
No. 22] Our New Immigration Policy 79
contributed over 10,000,000. The number of arriving aliens was
increasing with enormous rapidity. Their racial origins and their
characteristics were changing. It was at this point that a real and
very serious immigration “problem” arose. The newer immigrants
generally had different and lower standards of living. They often
retained their loyalty to their native countries. They read their own
foreign language newspapers. Barriers of every kind separated them
from the native population and from earlier immigrants from northern
and western Europe. . .
Americans began to realize that the ideal of furnishing an asylum
for all the world’s oppressed was coming into conflict with changed
economic and social conditions. The cold facts were that the supply
of public land was practically exhausted; that acute labor problems,
aggravated by the influx of ignorant and unskilled aliens, had arisen;
that the large cities were becoming congested with foreigners; that
there were too many immigrants for proper assimilation; that large
numbers of mentally and physically unfit, and of the economically
undesirable, had come to the United States. Those who still honestly
clung to the idea of maintaining in the United States a haven of
refuge for the oppressed, one by one realized that America can only
be such a haven if conditions here are better than they are in the
lands from which our immigrants come, and that the only way to
maintain our economic, political, educational, and social standards is
by means of restriction.
The fallacies of the Melting Pot theory had also become obvious.
Years before the war it had become increasingly apparent that the
Melting Pot was no longer successfully performing its function; that
the American population was losing its homogeneous character; that
various nationalities cf recent immigrants were forming more and
more compact racial “blocs,” each bloc tenaciously maintaining its
own racial character, customs, and traditions. The United States
was fast becoming, as Theodore Roosevelt expressed it, a “polyglot
boarding house.” . . .
What goes into the Melting Pot determines what shall come out
of it. If the material fed in is a varied assortment of nationalities,
to a considerable extent physically and mentally below par, there
can be no hope of producing a superior or even of maintaining a
homogeneous race. It is often said, and with truth, that each of
80 Immigration and Race Elements [1924
the different alien peoples coming to America has something to con-
tribute to American civilization. But what America needs is desirable
additions to, and not inferior substitutes for, what it already possesses.
There is nothing in biological discovery or principles which would
lead to the hope that only the virtues of the various races which were
going to make up the future American would survive and the vices
be eliminated. The public consciousness awakened to the realization
that, to quote Dr. Henry Fairfield Osborn, “education and environ-
ment do not fundamentally alter racial values. . . . The true spirit
of American democracy, that all men are born with equal rights and
duties, has been confused with the political sophistry that all men
are born with equal character and ability to govern themselves and
others, and with the educational sophistry that education and environ-
ment will offset the handicap of ancestry.”
In another important respect public opinion underwent a striking
change in the decade or two before the war, namely in regard to the
relation of immigration to the need for labor. So accustomed had
Americans become to seeing vast numbers of foreign laborers flocking
into the factories, and mills, and coal mines that it had come to be
an axiom that the need for labor could only be supplied by a constant
and unlimited inflow of immigration. From the time of the first
agitation for restriction down to the present, large employers of
“cheap labor” have always insisted that the development of industry
and the prosperity of the country absolutely depend upon a free
inflow of alien labor. Of late years, however, it has been seen that
cheap foreign labor may often be so cheap that it is dear at any
price; that it is usually, in the long run, both socially and politically
very expensive; that a tremendously rapid development of the country
is by no means altogether desirable. . . .
Thus American public opinion had for twenty-five or thirty years
before the war been gradually crystallizing in favor of more restric-
tion. . . . The report of the United States Immigration Commission,
completed in 1917, which recommended restriction “as demanded by
economic, moral, and social considerations,” was a very convincing
official pronouncement on the question, and did much to convert the
nation as a whole to the necessity of prompt action. This commission,
it should be noted, suggested a percentage limitation of immigration.
Then came the Great War. Patriotic Americans who had been in
No. 22] Our New Immigration Policy 81
doubt on the question of restriction became aggressive restrictionists.
Those who had been advocating further effective legislation saw the
tide turning their way with irresistible force. . . . The lessons of the
war, and the prospect of a vast immigration following it, suddenly
fanned into a brighter flame the smouldering fire of sentiment in
favor of restriction. The result was that in the Emergency Act of
1921 the United States for the first time placed a definite numerical
limit on immigration.
With the three per cent law expiring on June 30, 1924, Congress
was faced with the necessity of providing adequate legislation to
take the place of the Emergency Act... .
The main provisions of the Act of 1924 may, for the sake of sim-
plicity and clearness, be grouped under three heads, (1) those dealing
with limitation of numbers; (2) those providing for selection; (3) those
based on humanitarian motives.
(1) Limitation. For three years, or until June 30, 1927, the annual
quota is fixed at two per cent of the number of foreign-born of each
nationality in this country in 1890. This will admit, within the
quota, somewhat over 160,000... .
Sec. 11 (b) of the Immigration Act of 1924 reads as follows: “The
annual quota of any nationality for the fiscal year beginning July 1,
1927, and for each fiscal year thereafter, shall be a number which
bears the same ratio to 150,000 as the number of inhabitants in
continental United States in 1920 having that national origin bears
to the number of inhabitants in continental United States in 1920,
but the minimum quota of any nationality shall be roo.” This is
Senator Reed’s racial origins provision. It cuts straight through
the controversy as to whether the quotas should be based on the
census of 1890 or that of roro. It bases the quotas not upon the
numbers of those composing the various alien colonies or foreign
“blocs” now in the country, ignoring the native-born, but divides
them among the nationalities in accordance with the national origins
of the whole population. The fairness of such an apportionment
cannot be disputed. It declares, in effect, that what we now are
racialiy we propose to remain. Against such a stand there can be
no ground for opposition. Each year’s immigration, as Commissioner
Curran put it, is to be “an exact miniature of what we are as to
stock.” This is bedrock immigration policy. It is one of the fairest
82 Immigration and Race Elements [1924
and most constructive provisions which has ever been embodied in
any immigration law... .
(2) Selection. Another important feature of the new law is the
attempt, for the first time, to exercise some control over immigration
at the source. Intending immigrants must apply to United States
consular officers abroad for “immigration visas.” These papers are
to contain answers to questions essentially the same as those asked
the immigrant on his arrival at our ports, together with full informa-
tion as to the alien’s family status, his occupation, personal appear-
ance, ability to speak, read and write, addresses of relations, destina-
tion, personal and family institutional history, etc. In addition, the
alien must furnish, if available, copies of his “dossier” and prison
and military record, and copies of all other available public records
concerning him kept by the government to which he owes allegiance.
“The application is to be signed by the alien in the presence of the
consular officer, and verified by oath administered by that officer.
No immigration visa is to be issued if it appears to the consular
officer, from statements in the application or in the papers submitted
therewith, that the immigrant is inadmissible to the United States
under the immigration laws,” nor “if the consular officer knows or
has reason to believe that the immigrant is inadmissible to the United
States under the immigration laws.” .. .
The new plan is the first real attempt on the part of the United
States to exercise some control over the kind of immigrants who shall
come here. Hitherto this matter has been left practically altogether
in the hands of foreign countries, some of which have certainly had
no hesitation about making it easy for their own least desirable
citizens to come to America.
(3) Humanitarian Provisions. The new law contains many pro-
visions based on broad humanitarian motives. The immigration
visa plan should reduce hardships to a minimum, prevent the division
of families, and put an end to deportations on account of arrivals
in excess of the quotas. Congestion at Ellis Island, with its attendant
hardships, will be done away with, and it will therefore be possible
to make the medical and general examinations more thorough and
more effective. Further, “an immigrant who is the unmarried child
under eighteen years of age, or the wife, of a citizen of the United
States who resided therein at the time of filing a petition” is admis-
No. 22] Our New Immigration Policy 83
sible as a “non-quota” immigrant provided there is no medical or
other ground for exclusion; and in the issuance of immigration visas
preference, up to fifty per cent of the annual quota of any nationality,
is to be given to an alien “who is the unmarried child under twenty-one
years of age, the father, the mother, the husband, or the wife, of a
citizen of the United States who is twenty-one years of age or over.”
These two provisions should surely be sufficiently liberal in preventing
the separation of families. Indeed, experience may show that these
exceptions in iavor of near blood relauves are too liberal, and are
open to abuse, in which case they can be modified by law. Among
the humanitarian sections mention may further be made of the
permission to reénter the United States after temporary absence,
and the admission, as non-quota immigrants, of ministers, professors
(including their wives and unmarried children under eighteen), and
bona fide students.
Further, more effective provision is made for preventing the
embarkation of aliens who fall into the excluded classes by increasing
the fines on the transportation companies in cases where such aliens
are brought to the United States. If intending immigrants of this
sort are kept from sailing, hardship and suffering are very greatly
reduced. Heavy fines on the transportation companies prevent these
companies from taking the passage money from aliens who may later
be deported. In each case the Secretary of Labor is to satisfy himself,
before imposing the fine, that the existence of the disease, or disability
might have been detected by competent examination, medical or
otherwise, or by “reasonable precaution” at the time of foreign
embarkation. In addition, the steamship company is to refund to
the alien the price of his ticket from initial point of departure to the
port of arrival. All these provisions are distinctly humane, and in
the interests of the alien as well as of the United States.
In all, it can truthfully be said in regard to the Act of 1924 that
no immigration measure has had such careful drafting and such
diligent, humane and disinterested consideration. It is an emphatic
national decision that, to quote President Coolidge, ““America must
be kept American.” It is based on bedrock principles. It marks a
turning point in American civilization.
Robert De C. Ward, in Foreign Affairs (New York, 1924), III, too-110 passim.
Reprinted by permission.
PART III
GOVERNMENT AND DEPENDENCIES
CHAPTER V — PRESIDENT THEODORE
ROOSEVELT
23. Roosevelt and Hanna (1901)
BY HERMANN H. KOHLSAAT (1923)
Kohlsaat (1853-1929) was connected with the bakery lunch industry, which grew
into the great lunch and wholesale bakery business of H. H. Kohlsaat and Co. In
1891 he became part owner of the Chicago Inter-Ocean, and in 1894 editor of the
Chicago Times-Herald; he was editor of the Chicago Evening Post from 1894 to
root, of the Chicago Record-Herald from 1910 to 1912, and of the Chicago Inter-
Ocean in 1913.—For Roosevelt, see the volumes from which Nos. 23-26 are taken,
also Joseph Bucklin Bishop, Theodore Roosevelt and his Time; Howard C. Hill,
Roosevelt and the Caribbean; Roosevelt’s Autobiography, and his works. See also
Nos. 31 and 47 below; also Roosevelt Encyclopedia (in progress).
OOSEVELT occupied a drawing-room. He asked me to sit
with him. His mind was working like a trip-hammer. He talked
oi many things he was going to do.
Part of the time I was in the second Pullman. An hour or two
after leaving Buffalo Mark Hanna came to my seat. He was in an
intensely bitter state of mind. He damned Roosevelt and said:
“T told William McKinley it was a mistake to nominate that wild
man at Philadelphia. I asked him if he realized what would happen
if he should die. Now look, that damned cowboy is President of the
United States!”
I tried to reason with him; told him Roosevelt did not want to be
“shot into the Presidency,” but could not mollify him.
84
No. 23] Roosevelt and Hanna 85
A little later I asked Roosevelt how he and Mark Hanna got along.
He said: “Hanna treats me like a boy. He calls me ‘Teddy.’” I
asked him if he realized what it meant if he and Hanna quarrelled,
and told him Hanna held the Republican organization in the hollow
of his hand; that he was the leader in the senate and could defeat
any measure that he, Roosevelt, proposed, and make his administra-
tion a failure. I cited the Garfield-Conkling row.
Roosevelt said “What can I do about it? Give him complete
control of the patronage!” I said: “Hanna would resent any such
suggestion.” I told him Hanna was heart-broken. He saw his best
friend gone. All his hopes crushed.
Finally I made the suggestion he invite Hanna to take supper
with him alone in his drawing-room. That he must not say anything
in the presence of the waiter that could be repeated, as the newspaper
men would pounce upon the poor colored boy when they arrived
in Washington. That after the plates and cloth were removed, to let
the table remain, calling his attention to the awful gap between
the front and back seat of a Pullman sleeper. When they were alone,
to say: “Old man, I want you to be my friend. I know you cannot
give me the love and affection you gave McKinley, but I want you
to give me just as much as you can. I need you. Will you be my
friend?” Then put your hands, palms up, on the table. If he puts
his hands in his pockets, you are a goner, but if he puts his hands
in yours, you can bet on him for life.” Roosevelt said: “All right, PIH
try at!”
Later, as I sat in the forward coach, I saw the waiter whisper in
Senator Hanna’s ear. He hesitated a moment, and then nodded his
head. He came to my seat at the other end of the car and said:
“That damned cowboy wants me to take supper with him, alone.
Damn him!” I said: “Mark, you are acting like a child. Go and
meet him half-way.”
Shortly after, he disappeared into Roosevelt’s car. I was very
nervous, but as an hour passed and thirty minutes more, Hanna came
in, and I knew by his face, as he limped toward my seat, that it was
“all right.” With a smile which the late Volney Foster said “would
grease a wagon,” Hanna said: “He’s a pretty good little cuss, after
all!” When I asked him what took place, he told of Roosevelt’s
putting his hands on the table, and as near as one man can quote
86 President Theodore Roosevelt [1904
another, he told what Roosevelt said, repeating what I had told
Roosevelt to say. “What did you do, Mark?” He answered: “ Put-
ting my hands in his I said: ‘I will be your friend on two conditions:
first that you carry out McKinley’s policies, as you promised.’ Roose-
velt answered: ‘All right, I will.’ ‘Second, that you quit calling me
“old man.” If you don’t PN call you “Teddy.”’ ‘All right. You
call me “Teddy” and I'll call you “old man.’’’” From that moment
Roosevelt and Hanna were staunch, loyal friends. The only rift was
for a few weeks late in 1903, when some anti-Roosevelt people tried to
get Mark Hanna into the race for the Presidency.
All of Roosevelt’s own writings and his numerous biographers tell
of his friendly relations with Hanna, but are silent as to how it came
about.
Hermann H. Kohlsaat, From McKinley to Harding (New York, Scribner’s,
1923), 100-103.
24. A Statesman’s View of a President (1904)
BY SECRETARY JOHN HAY (1904)
For Hay, see No. 121 below.—Bibliography as in No. 23 above.
1904. Jan. 17.— HE President came in for an hour and talked
very amusingly on many matters. Among
others he spoke of a letter he had received from an old lady in Canada
denouncing him for having drunk a toast to Helen [Hay] at her wed-
ding two years ago. The good soul had waited two years, hoping that
the pulpit or the press would take up this enormity. “Think,” she
said, “of the effect on your friends, on your children, on your own im-
mortal soul, of such a thoughtless act.”
March 14.—We lunched with the President; Cardinal Gibbons, the
Hengelmiillers, Thayers, and others were there. . . . The Cardinal
told the President he hoped earnestly for his election. He is deeply
disgusted with the campaign of Gorman against the negroes. He told
the President that he had seen a memorial drawn up by an eminent
lawyer in favor of paying a large sum to Colombia for her rights in
No. 24] A Statesman’s View of a President 87
Panama. He would not tell the name of the eminent lawyer, but a
light of recognition came into his cold blue eye when the President
told him that X. favored paying the money to Reyes, as that would
strengthen the Liberals as against the Clericals!
March 18.—At the Cabinet meeting to-day the President said some
one had written asking if he wanted to annex any more Islands. He
answered, “about as much as a gorged anaconda wants to swallow a
porcupine wrong end to.” . . . He was orienting some one, when it was
observed that the man was doubtless conscientious. “Well,” he burst
out, “if a man has a conscience which leads him to do things like that,
he should take it out and look at it—for it is unhealthy.”
March 20.—The President talked of the situation, which seems to
him very rosy; he thinks that Congress will adjourn by the first of
May and that everything will go smoothly during the summer; that
Parker will probably be nominated by the Democrats, but that he
will not be formidable. The things that annoy him most are trifles;
such as the cost of the White House improvements, the upholstering
f the Mayflower, etc. He has heard that some people in New York
have said he was a grotesque figure in the White House, and wonders
what they mean.
March 27.—The President is much preoccupied about the Chair-
manship of the National Committee. His mind is now turned to Root.
I should be glad if he would take it: it would still further extend his
reputation and his national standing, to carry on a campaign which
is sure to be interesting and wholesome, and crowned by a great suc-
cess. It would be an advantage also to the party to keep its best men
like Root and Taft, etc., as much to the front as possible for the sake
of the contrast, etc.
April 5.—At the Cabinet meeting this morning it was suggested
that would be a good candidate to carry Maryland——(which
Gary says we will carry anyhow). Taft said: “Mr. President, are you
particular about your company? ” T. answered: “Tama liberal man,”
and said no more.
Shaw told a good story about poor Senator He and some
more grafters had agreed to press a certain bill through the-———
Legislature, and had been paid for it. As the session drew near its
close the lobbyist grew alarmed and went to see , who demanded
a supplement. The man said: “What can I say to my principals, who
88 President Theodore Roosevelt [1904
thought this matter settled? ” ‘Tell them,” said thoughtfully,
“that I’m acting damn strange.”
April 10.—The President came in and talked mostly about the sit-
uation in New York, which annoys him greatly and somewhat alarms
him. He sees a good many lions in the path—but I told him of the
far greater beasts that appeared to some people as in Lincoln’s way,
which turned out to be only bobcats after all.
April 26.—At the Cabinet this morning the President talked of his
Japanese wrestler, who is giving him lessons in Jiu Jitsu. He says the
muscles of his throat are so powerfully developed by training that it
is impossible for any ordinary man to strangle him. If the President
succeeds, once in a while, in getting the better of him, he says, “Good!
lovely! ”
May 8.—The President was reading Emerson’s “Days” and came
to the wonderful closing line; “I, too late, Under her solemn fillet saw
the scorn.” I said, “I fancy you do not know what that means.” “O,
do I not? Perhaps the greatest men do not, but I in my soul know I
am but the average man, and that only marvelous good fortune has
brought me where I am.”
May 12.—Bade the President good-bye. He said, with jeering good
aature, he hoped I would enjoy my well-earned rest. [Mr. Hay was
going to make an address at the World’s Fair in St. Louis.]
June 5.—(The President] spoke of his own speeches, saying he knew
there was not much in them except a certain sincerity and kind of
commonplace morality which put him en rapport with the people he
talked with. He told me with singular humor and recklessness of the
way X and the late lamented Holls tried to put him on his guard
against me.
June 21.—The President returned from Valley Forge yesterday
and we all congratulated him at the Cabinet meeting to-day on his
sermon on Sunday. It seems it was entirely impromptu, Knox hav-
ing asked him to speak only just before Church time. K. says the
question what is to become of Roosevelt after 1908 is easily answered.
He should be made a Bishop.
August 11.—I dined with the President last night. . . . After din-
ner we adjourned to the library and the President read his letter of
acceptance. I was struck with the readiness with which he accepted
every suggestion which was made.
No. 24] A Statesman’s View of a President 89
August 13.—I went to the White House this morning and found
the President screaming with delight over a proposition in the [New
York] Evening Post that Wayne MacVeagh should be Secretary of
State in Parker’s Cabinet. So the dear Wayne has wearied of waiting
for my envied shoes at the hands of Roosevelt.
October 17.—I lunched at the White House—nobody else but Yves
Guyot and Theodore Stanton. The President talked with great
energy and perfect ease the most curious French I ever listened to.
T+ was absolutely lawless as to grammar and occasionally bankrupt
m substantives; but he had not the least difficulty in making himself
understood, and one subject did not worry him more than another.
October 23.—The President came in this morning badly bunged
about the head and face. It did not occur to me till after he had gone
that I had come so near a fatal elevation to a short term of the Pres-
idency.! Dei avertite omen!
He was in high spirits, though he always speaks of the election as
uncertain. I showed him Lincoln’s Pledge of August, 1864, written
when he thought McClellan might be elected. He was much im-
pressed, and went on as he often does to compare Lincoln’s great
trials with what he calls his little ones. He asked me to read Stan-
nard Baker’s article about him in McClure’s which he likes.
October 30.—The President came in for an hour. We talked awhile
about the campaign and at last he said: “ It seems a cheap sort of thing
to say, and I would not say [it] to other people, but laying aside my
own great personal interests and hopes,—for of course I desire in-
tensely to succeed,—I have the greatest pride that in this fight we are
not only making it on clearly avowed principles, but we have the
principles and the record to avow. How can I help being a little
proud when I contrast the men and the considerations by which I am
attacked, and those by which I am defended? ”
November 3.—The President’s fall from his horse ten days ago,
might have been very serious. He landed fairly on his head, and his
neck and shoulders were severely wrenched. For a few days there
seemed a possibility of meningitis. But he is strong and well-knit,
and the spine escaped injury. I am thankful to have escaped a four
months’ troubled term of the Presidency. Strange that twice I have
1 There being no Vice-President, Mr. Hay, as Secretary of State, stood next in line of
succession to the Presidency.
go President Theodore Roosevelt [1904
come so hideously near it—once at Lenox and now with a hole-in-a-
bridge. The President will of course outlive me, but he will not live
to bevold ser. *
November 8.—I went over to the White House at a quarter after nine,
thinking the returns must have begun to come in by that time. I
found the Red Parlor full of people, the President in the midst of them
with his hands full of telegrams. I asked him if he had anything
decisive as yet. He said: “ Yes, Judge Parker has sent his congratu-
lations.” . . . Everywhere the majorities are overwhelming... .
“Tam glad,” said Roosevelt, “to be President in my own right.”
November 12.—The papers this morning announce on the authority
of the President that I am to remain Secretary of State for the next
four years. He did it in a moment of emotion,—I cannot exactly see
why ,—for he has never discussed the matter with me and I have never
said I would stay. I have always deprecated the idea, saying there
was not four years’ work in me; now I shall have to go along awhile
longer, as it would bea scandal to contradict him... .
J. B. Bishop told me to-day of the tumultuous dinner last night at
the White House and the speechless amazement of John Morley at
the faconde of the President. He said afterwards to Bishop: “The
two things in America which seem to me most extraordinary are Ni-
agara Falls and President Roosevelt.”
November 20.—I read the President’s message in the afternoon. .
Made several suggestions as to changes and omissions. The President
came in just as I had finished, and we went over the matters together.
He accepted my ideas with that singular amiability and open-minded-
ness which form so striking a contrast with the general idea of his
brusque and arbitrary character.
William Roscoe Thayer, The Life and Letters of John Hay (Boston, Houghton
Mifflin, 1915), II, 351-360 passim. Reprinted by special permission of the pub-
lishers.
No. 25] Roosevelt the Trust Buster QI
25. Roosevelt the Trust Buster (1904)
BY JAMES FORD RHODES (1922)
Rhodes (1848-1927), for years a business man, trained himself as an historian.
He received honorary degrees from several American universities and from Oxford,
and was awarded the Loubat Prize (Berlin Academy of Science, 1901), the gold
medal of the National Institute of Arts and Letters (1919), and the Pulitzer Prize
(Columbia University, 1918). He was a member of many learned societies. He
wrote History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 (7 vols., 1893-1906),
From Hayes to McKinley, 1877-1896 (1919), and The McKinley and Roosevelt Ad-
ministrations, 1897-1909 (1922); also Historical Essays (1909); History of the Civil
War (1017).
HE Northern Pacific and Great Northern railroads ran from
Lake Superior to Puget Sound on the Pacific coast, and on
through traffic were competing lines; but for a number of years their
relations had been altogether friendly. Both desired a terminal in
Chicago which should connect with their St. Paul-Minneapolis lines,
and after much discussion and negotiation acquired the Chicago,
Burlington and Quincy. James J. Hill, as honest a man as ever lived,
whose career from early poverty to superfluous wealth was noted for
the confidence other men reposed in him, may be said to be the hero
of the merger of the three railroads. He formed a company called the
Northern Securities which was to own the C., B. and Q. property as
well as that of the other two. This was a holding company whose
officers should manage the three railroads and divide the dividends
among the stockholders of the Northern Pacific and Great Northern;
the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy stockholders were paid by joint
bonds of the two purchasing railroads.
Hill’s idea in making the merger was for the sake of no vulgar profit
but to render the stock of the Northern Securities Company an in-
vestment to men and their heirs who would have a great protection
in the event of the death of those now in control. Hill and his attor-
neys studied the precedents, laws and regulations and especially
the decision of the United States Supreme Court in the Knight case,
arriving at the conclusion that the Anti-Trust Act of 1890 did not
apply to such a merger; they went forward therefore with their plans.
And if James J. Hill could have left men who would carry on business
as he had carried it on, the merger could not be said to interfere with
the public good.
92 President Theodore Roosevelt [1904
But he had to reckon with Theodore Roosevelt, who was antagonis-
tic to the operations of large financiers and believed that it was incum-
bent on him as President to protect the public against their operations.
While Roosevelt liked Hill, he did not consider J. Pierpont Morgan,
who was an active coadjutor with Hill in this enterprise, a good finan-
cial adviser. When Morgan heard of the President’s opposition to the
merger he went to Washington and said to him, “If we have done any-
thing wrong send your man (meaning Attorney-General Knox) to my
man (naming one of his lawyers) and they can fix it up.” “That
can’t be done,” said the President. “We don’t want to fix it up,”
added Knox who assisted at this interview, “we want to stop it.”
Morgan inquired, “Are you going to attack my other interests, the
Steel Trust and the others?” “Certainly not,” replied the President,
“unless we find out that in any case they have done something that
we regard as wrong.”
When Morgan went away Roosevelt expressed his opinion, saying
to Knox: “That is a most illuminating illustration of the Wall Street
point of view. Mr. Morgan could not help regarding me as a big
rival operator, who either intended to ruin all his interests or else
could be induced to come to an agreement to ruin none.” Roosevelt
considered Fill a good financial adviser but said that he had to be on
the watch that Hill, in giving him counsel, had not an eye to his own
interest. Still Roosevelt appreciated a man who from nothing had
amassed a fortune of sixty millions, although he did not rate as the
highest ability the acquiring of wealth in this country of enormous
resources. His heroes were drawn from another class.
It is interesting to note the conflict between these two honest men.
Roosevelt requested an opinion from Attorney-General Knox, who on
February 19, 1902, authorized the publication of the following state-
ment: “Sometime ago the President requested an opinion as to the
legality of this merger, and I have recently given him one to the
effect that, in my judgment, it violates the provisions of the Sherman
Act of 1890 (the Anti-Trust Act), whereupon he directed that suitable
action should be taken to have the question judicially determined.”
This was a bomb shell in Wall Street and the beginning of the active
hostility of the large financial interests to Theodore Roosevelt, who
directed the course of his Attorney-General.
Knox knew the ground well, as before McKinley had drawn him
No. 25] Roosevelt the Trust Buster 93
from the active practice of his profession, he was a corporation lawyer.
He began suit in the United States Circuit Court in St. Paul on March
I0, 1902; and on April 9, 1903, a decision was rendered by four Cir-
cuit judges sitting in St. Louis. This tribunal “decreed that, as the
combination known as the Northern Securities Company violated the
Anti-Trust Act of 1890, that Company is enjoined from attempting
to acquire further stock of the Northern Pacific or Great Northern
Railways; it is further enjoined from voting the stock already acquired
or attempting to exercise any control whatsoever. The Northern
Pacific and Great Northern are enjoined from permitting any such
action on the part of the Securities Company and from paying to that
Company any dividends on stock which it now claims to own.”
The case went to the United States Supreme Court, the majority
opinion of which was written by Justice Harlan (March 14, 1904),
which took the ground that the merger was opposed to the Anti-
Trust Act of 1890 and therefore illegal; the decree of the lower Court
was affirmed. It was given out that the Court had decided in favor
of the Government by 5 to 4; but Justice Brewer, in stating his agree-
ment in the main with the four others, differed in some degree, so
that it was jocularly said that the Government had won by 4% to 43.
Many were vitally interested in the decision and the gossip of the day
put Justice Holmes, who was appointed by Roosevelt, on the side of
the Government. It was a great surprise therefore that when the
decision was known, he should be found on the other side, giving
the grounds of his judgment. Gossip of the day was also concerned
with two other judges who were counted against the Government,
but as matter of fact concurred with Harlan in his opinion. This
gossip redounded to the majesty of the Court.
Hill’s opinion soon after Knox’s announcement was given in a
private letter. “It really seems hard,” he wrote, “when we look
back on what we have done and know that we have led all Western
companies in opening the country and carrying at the lowest rates,
that we should be compelled to fight for our lives against the political
adventurers who have never done anything but pose and draw a
salary.” But when the Supreme Court decision, which he thought
would be favorable to his enterprise, was rendered, he said, “‘ We must
all bow to the law of the land,” and steps were taken to undo the work
of combination. Through the decisions of the Courts, no property
94 President Theodore Roosevelt [1904
was sacrificed, but shares, which had been transferred to the Secu-
rities Company, were returned to their original owners; but any
such holding company as the Northern Securities was forbidden.
No one who has read carefully the life of Hill can do otherwise than
feel sympathy with the man when one of his darling projects was de-
feated, but as we look at it now, President Roosevelt was right and the
decision of the Court was sound. While this combination as directed
by Hill may not have been against the public good, the mischief lay
in the precedent, for, were this merger approved, a few men by suc-
cessive steps might have controlled the railroad system of the coun-
OAA auc
Roosevelt’s idea of the Knight case, which had been decided by the
United States Supreme Court in January, 1895, with but one dis-
senting voice, was that such a merger as that involved in the Northern
Securities case could be reached only by the action of the States them-
selves; but by the decision of the same court in the actual (i. e. the
Northern Securities) case the nation might act and for this Roosevelt
contended. He thus wrote: “By a vote of five to four the Supreme
Court reversed its decision in the Knight case, and in the Northern
Securities case sustained the Government. The power to deal with
industrial monopoly and suppress it and to control and regulate
combinations, of which the Knight case had deprived the Federal
Government, was thus restored to it by the Northern Securities
case.”
From the day of Knox’s statement, the line was drawn between
Roosevelt and the large financial interests of the country. A goodly
part of the history of his administration is due to that conflict, and
as Roosevelt was effective as a fighter, he was ready to throw down the
gauntlet.
“The Northern Securities Suit,” he wrote during August, 1904,
“is one of the great achievements of my administration. I look back
upon it with great pride for through it we emphasized the fact that
the most powerful men in this country were held to accountability
before the law.”
James Ford Rhodes, The McKinley and Roosevelt Administrations (New York,
Macmillan, 1922), 221-227 passim.
No. 26 View of Roosevelt as Peacemaker 95
26. An Outsider’s View of Roosevelt as Peacemaker (1905)
BY LORD CHARNWOOD (1924)
Lord Charnwood, an English political observer and biographer, has written also
an excellent biography of Lincoln.
ND now it must be briefly said how, in 1905, the President of
the United States, having done much to enhance his country’s
strength and having made his personality quietly felt in more than one
land across the seas, became one of the greatest figures then before the
world, as a devoted and most successful peacemaker. Many of us can
remember vividly how the struggle between the compact and trained
strength of Japan, and the decayed, giant might of Russia, exerted at
a vast distance, came to a deadlock, in which national pride and na-
tional suspiciousness withheld each country from seeking peace, al-
though neither could gain anything by further fighting except at a
ruinous cost.
Early in this year Roosevelt, with his vividly sympathetic compre-
hension of the characters and situations of other countries, began
anxiously to brood on the question whether neighbors could do no
neighborly service. An Englishman, who, about this time, had a
strange intermittent talk with him, while he simultaneously attended
a Cabinet meeting in the next room, is reported to have brought home
a quaint account of his emphatic self-contradictory declarations, that
there was nothing that could possibly be done and also that the war
must stop. It was the odd, superficial token of an intense, self-re-
strained watchfulness. The detailed story now before us of his inter-
vention cannot usefully be abridged. Its effect upon every careful
reader must be the same. I have used the word devoted, since no
weaker word can well be applied to a man who, with overabundant
work on his hands, put, as he did, his immense industry and resource-
fulness to the severest strain which they ever underwent, unsolicited,
in a high cause, in which rebuff and failure were most probable, and
in which success, if it was to come, would very likely demand his
trading all the credit and lustre to others.
His task was, at first, one of incessantly feeling his way, not only
with Japan and Russia, but with France, England, and Germany.
96 President Theodore Roosevelt [1905
It should be said clearly that the only noticeable help which he found
in these three neutral countries came from the German Emperor,
whose help was zealous and valuable, and of whom his critical and
humorous estimate became tinged with real gratitude. At a later
stage when the combatant Powers showed coy signs of a wish for peace;
later still when each was willing to negotiate, if, and if, and if; last of
all when their plenipotentiaries had met in America, and, like their
armies, come to a deadlock from which only a strong arm could free
them the difficulty of the task never abated. His letters to Sir George
Trevelyan, Mr. St. Loe Strachey, and others throw exceedingly pleas-
ant lights upon the whole of this performance in diplomacy. At the
close of August it ended with actual peace, just when matters had be-
gun to seem quite hopeless. It had exacted of him throughout not
only ability and courage, but unfailing patience and the sympathetic
tact of a gentleman whose quality, if not always exhibited, was often
almost as conspicuous as Lincoln’s.
He was, too, helped here by his many appreciations of a race so
distant from us as the Japanese. The large subject of American rela-
tions with the Far East cannot here be opened up, but it may be said
that the same right feeling that he showed in his attitude toward the
dark races which are palpably inferior, governed him also in his various
dealings with other races which, though we can never regard them from
a superior standpoint, present quite as difficult a problem of human
relationships. If his intervention in the Japanese struggle with Russia
—in which by the way Realpolitik would have bidden an American
statesman to let the Japanese exhaust themselves—may be dismissed
so briefly, it is because in this instance nothing but frank eulogy
would be in place.
Lord Charnwood, Theodore Roosevelt (Boston, Atlantic Monthly Press, 1924),
146-148.
CHAPTER VI— NATIONAL ADMINISTRATION
AND PROBLEMS
27. The Corrupting Power of Public Patronage (1901)
BY CONGRESSMAN OSCAR W. UNDERWOOD
Underwood (1862-1929) was a Representative in Congress from Alabame from
1895 to 1915, and was Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee; he was Sen-
ator from 1915 to 1927, and Democratic floor leader. He was a prominent candidate
for the presidential nomination in 1924.—Bibliography: William Dudle» Foulke,
Fighting the Spoilsmen.
ROM the commencement of our government, the questior. of
the appointment and removal of civil employees has harassed
and annoyed those charged by the people with the administration of
public affairs, and at times has greatly embarrassed and seriously
menaced the successful determination and execution of great govern-
mental policies and public undertakings. The makers of the Consti-
tution realized the danger that must threaten a republican govern-
ment, should the subordinate offices become the spoils of partisan
victory; and after many days’ debate as to whether the power of
appointment should be vested in the two Houses of Congress, or solely
with the Executive, or with the Executive and the Senate jointly,
they finally determined on the latter course. They provided certain
other limitations on the power of appointments to office, such as:
No senator or representative shall, during the time for which he was elected,
be appointed to any civil office under the authority of the United States, which
shall have been created, or the emoluments whereof shall have been increased,
during such time; and no person holding any office under the United States shall
be a member ^f either House during his continuance in office.
These limitations were wise, but not far-reaching enough to guard
against the dangerous abuse of the power of patronage. . . .
Although the abuses that once existed have been checked by the
present Civil Service Commission, there are still many flagrant viola-
tions of the law taking place every day. So long as it is left optional
97
98 National Administration and Problems {1901
with the several heads of departments to select from the names certified
to them from the Civil Service Commission, or to reject the entire
list without giving a trial to the men thus certified, there is bound to
be more or less partisan politics shown in the selections. The result
is that a new Administration succeeding one of the opposite party
will surely find the great majority of the civil service positions in the
hands of its political opponents; and a cry will be raised by its own
partisans for an equal distribution of the places, which of necessity
will destroy any civil service system ever created.
I did not, however, commence this article with the intention of
discussing the evils or shortcomings of our present system, but rather
to call attention to the dangerous influence exerted by the spoils
system on the legislation of the country. You sometimes hear some
blatant reviler of the characters of other men, who has never had an
opportunity of gaining correct information, denounce senators and
representatives in Congress as guilty of corruption and other high
crimes and misdemeanors. I do not contend that corrupt men do
not sometimes enter in the professions, or among business men; but
I do say, after six years’ service in the House of Representatives,
that I have never heard of any member of Congress being corrupted
by the use of money. Taking the 357 representatives as a whole, I
am sure that their moral character will not suffer in a comparison
with that of the same number of citizens chosen as you come to
them from any religious denomination in the land. This of necessity
is so. The American people are an honest, God-fearing constituency;
and, as a rule, the men they send to represent them reflect their
moral character as well as their views on great political questions.
Wherein, then, is the complaint? It is that the pressure brought
by the people at home on their representatives to secure offices for
them gives the executive branch of the government a dangerous
power in influencing legislation.
A new Administration is returned to power. Mr. Blank belongs
to the same party as the President-elect. He probably comes to
Washington with campaign pledges to honor; or, if he has been wise
and made no ante-election promises, he has many true and tried
friends and political followers who are justly entitled to his support,
and for whom he desires to obtain some of the appointive offices.
The new Administration has a policy it desires to carry out, which
No. 27] Corrupting Power of Public Patronage 99
requires legislation, and bills are, therefore, introduced by the party
leader. Mr. Blank finds that some of these measures are not to the
interest of his constituency; or, as a man of independent thought, he
conscientiously believes they will not be beneficial to the country.
He calls on the Cabinet officers to secure his friend’s appointment.
He is met with pleasant words, and is told that his friend seems to
be well endorsed, but that the matter cannot be determined at present.
Mr. Blank is then asked what he thinks in regard to the Administra-
tion measures. The member of the Cabinet is greatly astonished
that he cannot support the Administration, and asks him to read
somebody’s report, and consider it from the standpoint of a party
man, etc. After he has made his fourth or fifth call, with the same
result, he will begin to hear from his friend, who tells him that congress-
men from adjacent districts have received appointments, and that
the people at home cannot understand why he cannot do something
for his district. The question that he has now to decide is whether
he shall submit to become a tool in the hands of the Administration,
secure the offices, and drift with the party tides, or whether he shall
be a representative of the people, determining for himself what best
conserves their interest and meets the demands of justice and right.
To do this he must return to face angry friends, and must meet the
opposition of an unfriendly Administration. Within the last four
years I have seen at least two men of great abiiity retire from public
life rather than surrender their own individuality; being unwilling to
remain and contend against a hostile Administration. When the
Porto Rican bill was first reported to the House, over thirty members
of the Administration party declared themselves against it; but as
the debate progressed it was understood by all that the Administration
whip was being brought into use to bring the recalcitrants into line.
One of the original opponents had the courage to announce openly
that he had changed his views because the President had requested
him to do so. And, on the final vote, only eight had the courage to
support their original conviction.
I do not wish to be understood, from what I have said above, as
contending that the present Administration alone is responsible for
this state of affairs. It has existed with all parties and all administra-
tions almost since the beginning of the government. All that I contend
is that from decade to decade it has grown worse instead of better.
100 National Administration and Problems [190r
If the Democratic party has stood for one thing more than another,
it has been for a policy of opposition to a permanent increase of the
standing army; yet I have seen the solid phalanx of the opposition
in the House of Representatives broken, in the passage of an army
bill, by the distribution of patronage. When the cry for place is
heard from the editor’s son, the banker’s son, the lawyer’s son, the
farmer’s son—in truth, everybody’s son—the guardian of the liberties
of the people, the keeper of the public treasury, must, indeed, be a
bold man. The bill providing for the holding of an International
Exposition at St. Louis and that creating a Spanish War Claims
Commission were passed, after being at first defeated, by making the
Commission non-partisan, so that the advocates of the bills secured
a number of candidates for the places from almost every State, to
work on their delegations. The fact that a member of Congress is
regarded as the means through which patronage is distributed has so
affected legislation as to cause the unnecessary expenditure of millions
of dollars and the passage of bills that otherwise would never have
become law.
The framers of the Constitution contemplated that the legislative
branch of the government should be separate and distinct from the
executive, in order that one might be a check upon the other. This
was a wise provision; and, if our government is to last, it must be
guarded with the utmost care. It can only be done by prohibiting
by law the representative of the people from having any voice in the
appointment of the government offices, either directly or indirectly,
and making him ineligible for an appointive office under the govern-
ment for at least two years after the term for which he has been
elected has expired. Make his sole business that of legislation, let
all fear of punishment or hope of reward come only from his constitu-
ency, and the majesty of the people as the rulers of this country will
be maintained.
Oscar W. Underwood, in Forum, July, 1901 (New York), XXXI, 557-560.
No. 28] Department of Commerce and Labor IOI
28. The Department of Commerce and Labor (1903)
BY SECRETARY GEORGE B. CORTELYOU
Cortelyou was personal secretary to Presidents McKinley and Roosevelt; by the
latter he was appointed the first Secretary of the Department of Commerce and
Labor; and he served also as Postmaster-General and Secretary of the Treasury.
Has been in business since 1909.—Bibliography: Annual Reports of the Secretary
of Commerce. See No. 89, below.
ONGRESS has declared it to be the province and duty of the
Department of Commerce and Labor to “foster, promote, and
develop the foreign and domestic commerce, the mining, manufac-
turing, shipping, and fishery industries, the labor interests, and the
transportation facilities of the United States.”
One of the most important methods of aiding commerce is to give
to those engaged in it such definite information regarding existing
conditions as will enable them intelligently to determine the classes
of articles which can be most profitably produced, the sections to
which they should be distributed, and the agencies through which
they can best be placed before the prospective customers. In all of
this work the new Department is actively engaged.
The Census Bureau, which in the year 1900 gathered the statistics
of population, manufactures, and agriculture, is now engaged in
collecting and compiling information on other subjects having impor-
tant relation to our industries, and is also preparing to take, a year
hence, another census of our manufactures, thus giving a quinquennial
instead of decennial statement, which in the past has been our sole
information on the subject of manufactures. In addition, its statistics
on cotton production are now presented at frequent intervals, and
in conjunction with special investigations ordered by Congress, it is
giving to the country a fuller knowledge of the great factors of our
commerce than ever before.
The Bureau of Statistics of the Department publishes, for the
benefit of our commercial interests, such information as it is able to
collect with the coöperation of the various governmental offices and
commercial organizations. It also gathers and publishes from month
to month statements of the concentration of the principal articles at
certain internal points and their transportation therefrom to various
102 National Administration and Problems [1903
parts of the country and to the seaboard for exportation. This work,
a comparatively new one, is carried on by the Bureau largely through
the codperation of commercial bodies, the press, and the large organi-
zations engaged in transportation. In like manner information is
collected and distributed regarding exports and imports. Material
for use in manufacture is forming a steadily growing share in our
imports, while the home market for articles in a form ready for con-
sumption is more fully supplied year by year by our own producers
and manufacturers. Manufacturers’ materials in 1860 formed 26 per
cent of our total imports; in 1880, 37 per cent; in 1900, 46 per cent,
and in 1903, 48 per cent, while the imports of articles manufactured
in a state ready for consumption have decreased in about the same
proportion.
Monthly statements of the total exports of the various articles of
production and of the countries to which exported are presented by
the Bureau of Statistics and distributed to individuals and to com-
mercial and industrial organizations. In addition, statements are
issued at the close of each fiscal year showing the distribution by
countries of every article exported and the quantity and value sent
to each country during each year of the previous decade. Semiweekly
statements of commercial conditions are prepared and distributed to
the press and to commercial organizations, thus giving the widest
possible publicity to the latest available information regarding
commercial conditions.
Still another important undertaking of the Department is the
publication and distribution of commercial information collected by
the consular service of the United States—a service composed of
more than 300 men scattered throughout the world, who report
regularly upon the opportunities for American commerce in their
respective districts. These reports are forwarded by the consuls
through the State Department to the Department of Commerce and
Labor for publication and distribution. In addition to the information
thus obtained, the Department of Commerce and Labor from time
to time calls upon the consuls for special information for which
inquiry has been received from merchants and manufacturers. The
consular reports are issued daily in printed form, and distributed to
the press, to commercial bodies, and to a limited number of individuals.
It is through this service that the American commercial public is kept
No. 28] Department of Commerce and Labor 103
in close and constant touch with trade conditions and opportunities
throughout the world.
Another valuable agency is the Bureau of Labor of the Department.
Its investigations are not confined to conditions in the United States,
but are extended to other countries and to the relations which labor
conditions there bear to production and commerce and labor in the
United States. The information thus obtained is published periodi-
cally and widely distributed.
Other branches of the Department’s work in the interest of com-
merce and industry include the Light-House Establishment with its
thousands of employees engaged in maintaining aids and safeguards
to commerce on the coast and inland waterways; the Coast and
Geodetic Survey with its corps of skilled men engaged in surveys of
our coast; the Steamboat-Inspection Service, which contributes largely
to the safety of persons and capital engaged in commerce by water,
both along the coast and upon the interior waterways of the country;
the Bureau of Navigation, which has to do with matters relating to
the shipping interests of the United States; the Bureau of Fisheries,
which in promoting the development of our fresh and salt water
fisheries contributes largely to the food supplies entering into the
commerce of the country; the Bureau of Immigration, which protects
the country against violations of the laws governing immigration; and
the Bureau of Standards, which is intrusted with the care and use
of the national standards of measure, with the development of methods
of measurement, and with the dissemination of knowledge concerning
these subjects as applied in the arts, sciences, and industries.
Of the new Bureaus created by the act establishing the Department
of Commerce and Labor, the Bureau of Corporations is engaged in
the necessary foundation work for its duties under the law, and will
eventually become a valuable agency for the extension of our domestic
and foreign commerce. The Bureau of Manufactures is not yet
organized, owing to lack of appropriations. Funds available in present
legislation will make possible an early beginning of the work of this
Bureau.
Provision was made in the estimates for this year for an appropria-
tion to be expended under the immediate direction of the Secretary
for special investigations of trade conditions at home and abroad,
with the object of promoting the domestic and foreign commerce of
104 National Administration and Problems [1908
the United States, and for other purposes. Important instrumentis
in the promotion of trade are the agents dispatched from time to time
by foreign governments to study commercial opportunities in other
countries. Military and naval experts are sent abroad by our Govern-
ment to report on conditions that are of interest to their respective
Departments. In the daily competition of international trade there
is even greater need of intelligent outposts abroad. Special agents
are also required in the Department itself to inspect the branches of
its services in different localities and to secure uniform, businesslike,
and economical methods. The need of such agents in other Depart-
ments has been met by appropriations, and there is of course a similar
need in this new Department.
No appropriation has yet been made for this service, but I am
convinced that when its importance is made more apparent to Con-
gress favorable action will be taken.
In addition to the measures that have been taken for the reorganiza-
tion and improvement of existing branches of the statistical service,
it is proposed to establish an office for the collection and distribution
of foreign-tariff information, this being one of the directions in which
the Department’s work can apparently be extended with great
advantage. A small initial appropriation has been received for this
purpose.
Nations are inclined to regulate their commercial intercourse by
means of a double system of tariffs, permitting preferences through
commercial treaties. The current agitation in Great Britain for a
departure from traditional policy in order to increase commerce
between the members of the British Empire may have marked effects
upon American trade and incidentally upon American labor.
The industrial and economic facts which accompany such move-
ments must be closely, intelligently, and unremittingly watched. A
few competent employees, acting directly under the head of the
Department, will suffice for this purpose. From the small expenditure
proposed excellent results may be obtained. There is at present no
Government office in the United States engaged systematically in
the work of collecting information regarding foreign tariffs and making
that information available to our exporters. The Department has
received frequent inquiries for such information, and has been im-
pressed with the importance of providing a medium te supply it.
No. 28] Department of Commerce and Labor 105
You have been kept advised from time to time of what the new
Department is doing on these lines. Too much must not be expected
in the initial months of its existence. It will codperate with you and
you must codperate with it. There must be mutual understanding
and mutual support. It will not attempt the impossible. Its sphere
lies in what will be well-defined limits. It is a branch of the Federal
Government, and as such must adhere strictly to the lines marked
out for its jurisdiction and not inject itself into fields of private
endeavor where it does not belong. It can do a great work for the
commerce and industry of this country, but the results it will achieve
will be measured by the foresight and the intelligence and the con-
servatism with which it carries on its work as one of the great agencies
in the extension of our domestic and foreign trade.
The promise heid out for the new Department presupposes proper
equipment. As it demonstrates its usefulness, I am confident Congress
will increase its appropriations to a point adequate to its needs.
Like all new institutions it is bound to have its early struggles for
recognition. Congress and the Chief Executive have given it work
to do. Whether well or ill equipped, it will do this work in the best
manner possible. It seeks nothing it should not have. It will ask
for support only on its merits, but as it demonstrates its usefulness
in the scheme of our Government, it will have whatever recognition
and commendation it may be entitled to receive.
The new Department has to deal in a large way with great business
enterprises. Tt has approached these problems with conservatism
and impartiality. It has some jurisdiction over the interests repre-
sented by the toilers of the country, and it will do its share in securing
a recognition of labor’s rights and the encouragement of better feeling
and fairer dealing. It is made the statistical Department of the
Government, and it will make its statistics non-partisan, impartial,
and as accurate as they can be made. It has to do with marine
interests. It will advance those interests in every proper manner,
and I am sure it is not heresy to state in this presence that it will
lend the weight of its influence to the building up of the American
merchant marine. It has supervision over the difficult problems of
immigration and Chinese exclusion. There are inconsistencies in
the laws relating to them. There are grave hardships constantly
coming up in the execution of these laws. Not infrequently they
106 National Administration and Problems [1900-1908
present obstacles to the development of our commerce. But they
are founded on the good old doctrine of self-preservation, and must
be fairly enforced until more satisfactory legislation can be devised.
These and other problems to the solution of which the Department
must give its best energies are among the most important confronting
our people to-day. If the Department can do its legitimate share
in their solution, if its personnel can be raised to a high standard, if
its expenditures can be kept at the lowest figure consistent with good
administration, if, in a word, it can be conducted as a business estab-
lishment for the encouragement of good feeling and better under-
standing between all interests having to do with our trade and indus-
trial relations—the employer and the employee, the accumulator of
wealth, and the toiler in the counting room or the shop or the factory
who contributes to it—if it can be a potent force for enlightenment
and progress in these busy years of the nation’s development, all
who have an interest in its success will feel that their confidence
has not been misplaced and that they have contributed to the estab-
lishment and advancement of a factor in our national life.
Address of Secretary Cortelyou before the American Academy of Political and Social
Science, April 8, 1904 (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1904), 12-25.
<>
29. Distinctions among Parties (1900-1908)
BY PROFESSOR ARTHUR N. HOLCOMBE (1924)
Holcombe is Professor of Government at Harvard. He held several important
executive posts in Washington during the World War. He is the author of Public
Ownership of Telephones (1911); State Government in the United States (1916); Foun-
dations of the Commonwealth (1923). Bibliography: Kirk Harold Porter, National
Party Platforms; Edward Stanwood, History of the Presidency, II; James Albert
Woodburn, Political Parties and Party Problems in the United States.
HEODORE ROOSEVELT wasa vigorous writer of history, as well
as the foremost apostle of the strenuous life in modern politics, and
took sides in the partisan controversies of earlier times no less energetic-
ally than in those of his own day. He was an ardent admirer of the lead-
ing Federalist statesmen, and wrote a life of one of Hamilton’s closest
associates, Gouverneur Morris. In his writings and also in his speeches
No. 29 ] Distinctions among Parties 107
he did much to revive the vogue of the great Federalist leader and
popularize the Republican tradition. Roosevelt detested Jefferson
with a fervor that carried conviction to many of his followers, and
expressed his feeling with a freedom that undoubtedly helped the
Democrats to revive their old tradition. Many lesser leaders shared
the Rooseveltian point of view. Thus the realignment of parties,
brought about by the “sound money” campaign, was followed by a
corresponding readjustment of the partisan traditions. The “busi-
ness” interests and capitalistic elements in the Republican party
were doubtless grateful for the change, but those who cherished the
original Republican ideals observed the new spirit of their party with
concern and even alarm. The Eastern wing of the Republican party,
in which the former elements were strongest, rejoiced most at the new
spirit; the Republicans in the West, where the spirit of the earlier
Radical Republicanism found the most friendly soil, felt the greatest
misgiving. The conflict of ideals within the Republican party was not
so sharp as that between the two wings of the Democratic party, the
urban Democracy of New York and the rest of the Northeast, on the
one hand, and on the other the agrarian Democracy of the South and
West. But the conflict was sharp enough to have a place in any ac-
count of the causes of the division of the party during the campaign
of 1912.
The effect of the new Republican tradition upon the unity of the
party would have been more serious if Theodore Roosevelt had not
become its official leader. Roosevelt was as great an idealist in his
way as Bryan, and was not the man to permit the leader of a rival
party to monopolize the appeal to human disinterestedness. ‘“Aggres-
sive fighting for the right,” he declared, “is the noblest sport the world
affords.” And he seemed to practice what he preached. . . .
A more substantial cause of dissension within the Republican party
was the mutual jealousy on the part of the two principal interests
which constituted the bulk of its strength, the manufacturers and
“business men” of the Northeast, and the grain growers of the old
and new Northwest. . . . The feeling grew that the Eastern manu-
facturers had received more than their share of consideration from the
party leaders, and that the interest of the farmers was being neglected.
This feeling was strengthened by the struggles which took place at
Washington over the regulation of the railroads, the “trusts,” and
108 National Administration and Problems [1900-1908
“big business” generally. The inadequacy of the Interstate Com-
merce Act of 1887 for the prevention of objectionable practices by the
railroads had long since become manifest. The failure of the Sherman
Anti-trust Act of 1890 to check the growth of huge combinations of
capital and to protect the public against the menace of monopoly was
plain. The need of some control over the great meat packers and
other food manufacturers had been dramatically revealed to the gen-
eral public. And the danger in permitting the unregulated exploita-
tion of the natural resources of the country, especially that of the
forests by the lumber interests, was becoming widely recognized. But
the dominant elements in the Republican party seemed to be unalter-
ably opposed to all effective measures for the conservation of natural
resources, for the supervision of the packers and food manufacturers,
for the restraint of the “great corporations,” and for the regulation
of the railroads. The Senators and Representatives from the sections
where urban and industrial interests were strong would take no action,
and seemed unmindful of the interests of the farmers and of the masses
of consumers. The country was prosperous, and the business interests,
which had suffered such a fright at the climax of the campaign for the
free coinage of silver, wished for relief from further agitation. The
new Republican policy of colonial expansion had provided fresh
markets for American manufactures and fresh fields for American
industry and enterprise. In 1900 the gold standard had at last been
firmly established by law. There was little more that the business
interests wanted from the federal government in the line of legislation.
In opposition to further agitation they presented a united front.
The point of view of this wing of the party was stated most effec-
tively by the foremost leader of the Conservative Republicans, Senator
Hanna of Ohio. Mark Hanna had not rested content with his success-
ful management of the campaign which resulted in the election of
his friend, McKinley, to the Presidency. He entered the Senate,
where he gradually acquired the most influential place among the
ambitious and realistic politicians who represented the urban and
industrial interests in the Republican party. After McKinley’s death
he became their favorite candidate for the succession to the Presi-
dency, when the “temperamental” Roosevelt’s accidental term should
expire. In this rôle Hanna’s political utterances attracted universal
attention. Speaking at Steubenville, Ohio, in the campaign of 1903,
No. 29] Distinctions among Parties IOQ
he began as follows: “Two years ago I suggested to the people, in
view of the prosperous time, that they knew their business. They
replied that they did. One year ago I suggested that they leave well
enough alone. They replied that they would. This year I suggested
that they stand pat, and they will reply, ‘You bet.’ ”
This was language which the American business man could under-
stand. It voiced his own state of mind. He liked it. The farmer also
could understand it. But he did not like it so well. To be sure, he,
like the business man, was prosperous. . . . But the increased in-
fluence of the business interests made the farmer uneasy. The power
of money in politics seemed to have grown greatly and to have become
dangerous. People became more sensitive about corruption, both in
politics and in American life generally. The era of muck-raking began.
There was little difficulty in holding the two wings of the Republican
party together at the campaign of 1904. Mark Hanna had died and
there was no other candidate about whom the “‘stand-patters”’ could
rally. Roosevelt’s personal popularity easily gained him his renom-
ination. The Gold Democrats secured control of the Democratic
organization and Republican grain growers had no reason to prefer
their leadership to that of the Conservative Republicans. Indeed,
so many of the Democratic grain growers in the West and even former
populists preferred the Republican candidate to that of their own
party that the entire West was carried by the Republicans for the
first time since 1888. The Republican leaders were more concerned
over their chances in New York than on the Western prairies and
plains. But Roosevelt had not yet fully exposed his hand, and the
Stand-patters did not call for a show-down.
There was also little difficulty in holding the party together in 1908.
Roosevelt had done much which the Stand-patters greatly regretted.
He had forced through the Congress, against the bitter opposition of
Conservative Republicans, many measures which business interests
deemed unnecessary and improper. Conspicuous among these were
the Hepburn Act, providing effective regulation of the railroads, the
Meat Inspection and Pure Food and Drugs Acts, providing effective
supervision of the food industries, and the Employers’ Liability Act,
providing more adequate relief for railroad employees, injured in the
course of duty. He had also given a tremendous impetus to the
causes of conservation and trust regulation and had made it generally
IIO National Administration and Problems [1900-1908
far more difficult for predatory interests to secure undeserved advan-
tages at the expense of the public. But after all, plenty of opportunity
remained for legitimate businesses to make satisfactory profits. More-
over, Roosevelt enforced the law without fear or favor. He had not
hesitated to help big business and even Wall Street itself, when the
occasion seemed to require, as during the panic of 1907. He had set
a new standard of efficiency and integrity in the public service, and he
was about to hand over his leadership to a successor in whose ability
to maintain that standard of efficiency and integrity business interests
generally had confidence. Finally, the Stand-patters did not have
such an attractive alternative in 1908 as in 1904, for the Gold Demo-
crats had been compelled to surrender the leadership of their party
again to the agrarian Democracy of the South and West.
The Western Republicans were also content in 1908 to hold their
place in the combination of interests which constituted the Republican
party. If Roosevelt had not done much to gratify the special sec-
tional interests of the Western grain growers, he had shown himself
extraordinarily sensitive to what may be termed the common human
interests. The regulation of railroad rates had not resulted in any
special reductions for the particular benefit of farmers and stockmen,
but it had removed the fear of uncontrollable power. The prosecution
of the “trusts” had not brought noticeable reductions of prices, but
it had diminished the menace of unfair competition and oppressive
practices. The Reclamation Act and the new policy of conservation
had not yet revolutionized the process of settlement in the Far West,
but it at least held out the promise of equal opportunity to the small
homesteader. If the influence of money continued to seem excessive
in public affairs, there was the possibility of correcting that through
suitable changes in the laws of the states. The small farmers and
wage-earners were not chiefly dependent on the federal government
for corrupt practices acts and laws regulating the use of money in
elections. They were not at all dependent on federal government for
direct primaries, the initiative, referendum, and recall, and other
measures designed to make their representatives more responsive to
their wishes. Roosevelt at least had mightily contributed to the cre-
ation of an atmosphere in politics which made it easier for other
leaders to finish the work, and his successor in the leadership of the
party might be expected to push the good work along. The matter of
No. 29] Distinctions among Parties III
the tariff remained indeed a cause of discontent in the corn belt and
among the grain growers everywhere, but the Republican platform of
1908 promised a revision of the tariff, and it was supposed that this
would mean a downward revision, at least on articles which the farmer
had to buy... .
The Taft administration made a record of substantial achievement,
if it be judged merely by the number and importance of the measures
which were enacted into law and by its methods of law enforcement.
It began with the revision of the tariff in 1909. The Payne-Aldrich
Act provided not only a whole new set of tariff schedules, but also a
Tariff Commission to investigate the operation of the new rates and
supply the Congress with information concerning the need for further
changes. In the following year a permanent Commission on Economy
and Efficiency was created to assist the President in the supervision
of administration, and several other measures were enacted which
were designed to provide for the more economical and efficient en-
forcement of the laws. The most notable of these measures was the
act amending the Railroad Rate Regulation Act of 1906, which
broadened the powers of the Interstate Commerce Commission and
created a Commerce Court to review the Commission’s orders and
decrees. A Court of Customs Appeals was also created in order to
improve the administration of the tariff law, and in 1911 the organiza-
tion and procedure of the federal courts was greatly improved by the
reform of the Circuit Courts of Appeal and the enactment of a Judicial
Code. The execution of certain policies which the administration
inherited from its predecessor became the subject of adverse criticism,
especially the policy of conservation of natural resources, and the
President was compelled to make changes in his Cabinet in order to
placate the critics; but in general the Taft administration more than
sustained the expectations of the Conservative Republicans with
respect to his management of the business of government. It set new
standards of performance in the economical and efficient conduct of
public affairs.
But the agrarian wing of the Republican party did not judge the
Taft administration by these achievements. The corn and wheat
growers were more concerned with matters of legislative policy. The
revision of the tariff seemed to them much more serviceable to the
manufacturers and other urban interests within the party and to the
112 National Administration and Problems [1900-1908
wool growers of the Mountain section than to the farmers of the Mid-
Western prairies and plains. Hot controversy broke out as to whether
the tariff had been revised upward or downward, and neither wing of
the party was satisfied with the result. The urban interests desired
lower rates on food and raw materials, while maintaining the existing
level of protection on manufactures. The agrarian interests demanded
lower rates on clothing, farm equipment, and supplies, but opposed
any letting down of the bars which kept the produce of foreign, espe-
cially Canadian, farms out of the domestic market. The wool growers
and cattlemen wanted ample protection for their products, but the
woollen manufacturers and boot-and-shoe manufacturers were begin-
ning to look abroad for additional markets and fought vigorously for
the lowest possible manufacturing costs. New England and Pennsyl-
vania and the urban interests of the industrial Northeast generally
clung fast to protection for manufactured goods. The Pacific Coast
was interested likewise in protection for manufactures. California
was also specially interested in protection for its subtropical fruits
and nuts, while the Pacific Northwest was specially interested in the
protection of lumber and fish. The Mountain section had nothing to
gain by the protection of any of these commodities, but it was greatly
interested in wool and hides and hence interested indirectly also in the
prosperity of the textile and leather industries. The Central sections,
where the grain growers predominated, were increasingly disposed to
doubt the value of all kinds of protection. The reconciliation of these
diverse interests was too great a task for the Taft administration.
The expectations of the dominant interests in each of the various sec-
tions were excessive, and in the end those which were most powerful at
Washington prevailed over the others.
Arthur N. Holcombe, The Political Parties of To-Day (New York, Harper’s, 1924),
252-204 passim.
No. 30] The Campaign of 1912 113
30. The Campaign of 1912
BY WILLIAM DUDLEY FOULKE (1922)
Foulke, journalist and author, has been for many years interested in civil service
reform; he was President of the National Municipal League. In 188 5 he joined the
National Civil Service Reform League, and formed the Indiana C. S. R. League.
Served on Civil Service Commission 1899-1903, under appointment of President
Roosevelt. In 1899 he was chairman of the committee of the National Civil Service
Reform League to represent it at Washington. Author of Slav or Saxon (1887);
Maya, a Story of the Yucatan (1900); Protean Papers (1903); Lyrics of War and Peace
(1916): Fighting the Spoilsmen (1919).—Bibliography: Edward Stanwood, His-
tory of the Presidency, II, Ch. iv; American Year Book, 1912; William J. Bryan,
Tale of Two Conventions.
HE differences between Mr. Taft and the Progressives
were not confined to the tariff. Controversies arose in
regard to the conservation policy inaugurated by Roosevelt and en-
dorsed by the Republican Convention. President Taft made an un-
fortunate mistake in appointing Richard A. Ballinger Secretary of
the Interior as the successor to James R. Garfield and in removing
Gifford Pinchot from the Forestry Bureau. These controversies still
further separated the President from the Progressive members of his
party, to which group Garfield and Pinchot belonged.
In the meantime (in June, 1910) Mr. Roosevelt had returned from
his African and European journey. He was disappointed at the
President’s course and believed it would hurt the Republican Party,
but during a visit which Lucius B. Swift and I paid to him at Oyster
Bay he told us that he hoped his friends would not do anything which
would make their ultimate support of Mr. Taft impossible, since it
was extremely likely that he would be renominated, although it was
not probable that he would be re-elected. At that time and for some
time afterwards, Mr. Roosevelt had no intention of running for the
presidency himself.
It seemed clear that Mr. Taft’s policy was not to the liking of the
people. In the election of 1910 the Democrats gained heavily in the
House of Representatives, though the Progressive candidates suffered
less than others. The breach between them and the President kept
growing wider until finally a measure to reduce the tariff was passed
by a coalition of Democrats and Progressives and vetoed by the
President.
114 National Administration and Problems [ro12
In opposition to Mr. Taft’s views, Col. Roosevelt declared himself
a Progressive. Since he had declined to be a candidate and had asked
his friends to see to it that no movement was made to bring him for-
ward, a conference of Progressive Republicans endorsed Senator La
Follette. But a speaking tour throughout the country had ended
disastrously for him, and it was found that his candidacy was im-
possible. There was now no one else to lead the Progressives with any
chance of success, and Roosevelt at last, in the latter part of February,
1912, declared that “his hat was in the ring,” and that he had deter-
mined to make the race.
He was at once accused of ingratitude to Taft. The matter was
considered as if it were a question of personal obligation and not of
public duty. Yet it was Taft who had pledged himself to carry out
the Roosevelt policies; and it was Roosevelt who had returned from
Africa to find the President allied with his former opponents. Was
Roosevelt now to discredit his own record, or was he to hold up the
standard he had always maintained? If personal obligations could be
considered, it was Taft and not Roosevelt who had first disregarded
them. But the demands of public duty ought in any event to be
paramount.
Mr. Taft seemed to be quite unconscious of the real character of his
political companionships. He declared in a conversation with an
Indiana man, “I am just as much opposed to bosses as is your own wild
fanatic, the untamed Col. Wm. Dudley Foulke.”
And yet men like Penrose, Cannon, Aldrich, Lorimer, Guggenheim,
Hemenway, Gallinger, even George B. Cox, the boss of Cincinnati,
and other politicians of similar character, were working with all their
might to get him nominated. They wanted an “opponent” with
whom they could get on comfortably.
It was about this time that Roosevelt addressed the Constitutional
Convention of Ohio, then sitting at Columbus, and spoke in favour
of direct primaries and of the initiative, referendum and recall,
including the recall of decisions and even of judges. This last proposi-
tion exposed him to widespread criticism.
There was a vigorous contest in the primaries and in the district
nominating conventions between the Taft men and the Roosevelt
men. Wherever the question was submitted to the Republican voters,
as in Pennsylvania, Illinois, and even in Mr. Taft’s own State of
No. 30] The Campaign of 1912 II3
Ohio, Roosevelt carried all before him. But the State and district
conventions, manipulated as they were by political leaders, were
generally for Taft. Thus in Indianapolis the local chairman declared
that the Roosevelt men would not be allowed to carry a single ward!
He excluded the Roosevelt watchers from the polls, the primaries
were packed, and Roosevelt did not get a single Indianapolis delegate
to the State Convention. In that convention men who were fraud-
ulently elected were allowed to sit in judgment upon each other’s
credentials, and thus delegates at large were chosen to the national
convention. In other States, Washington, California, Texas, Alabama,
and elsewhere, similar frauds were committed.
The campaign soon became bitter and personal. Charges were
made by Roosevelt and Taft against each other. Taft declared
Roosevelt had garbled his speeches, had not given him “a square deal,”
and had disregarded the promise not to accept another nomination.
Roosevelt charged the President with violating confidential corre-
spondence, with intentional misrepresentation, and with a respon-
sibility for the alliance between crooked politics and crooked business;
and he reminded the President: “It is a bad trait to bite the hand
that feeds you.”
It remained to be decided by the Republican National Convention
at Chicago whether the voters of the party or its machine leaders
and manipulators should nominate the President. There were 254
contested seats. The members of the National Committee, selected
four years before and composed largely of reactionary politicians,
some of whom had been discredited in their own States, now seated
235 Taft delegates. This gave Taft a majority on the preliminary
roll call. The delegates thus seated voted in favour of each other’s
credentials, and Taft was nominated.
What would the Progressives do? Should they permit a conven-
tion controlled by fraud thus to deliver the party into the hands of its
reactionary elements by the nomination of a candidate who was not
the choice of the vast majority of its members? Ought they thus to
perpetuate misrule? They determined to organise a party of their
own. Mr. Roosevelt was under no illusions as to the probable out-
come of this course. He wrote me on July rst that he felt the Demo-
crats would probably win if a progressive man should be nominated,
adding, “But of course there is no use of my getting into a fight in ¢
116 National Administration and Problems [1912
half-hearted fashion, and I could not expect Republicans to follow
me out if they were merely to endorse the Democratic Convention.
So I hoisted the flag and will win or fall under it.”
Progressive conventions were held in the various States and dis-
tricts, and delegates were sent to a national convention, which met
on August 5th in Chicago. I was one of the delegates from my own
district and was placed on the committee on resolutions to prepare
the platform. Roosevelt, as the guest of the convention, delivered
what he called “A Confession of Faith.” The convention was filled
with a kind of religious enthusiasm which reached its climax when he
concluded.
The committee on resolutions had plenty to do on account of the
great length of the platform and the vast number of questions con-
sidered. The original draft when read to us took more than an hour
in delivery. I protested vigorously, and in our efforts to shorten and
modify it we spent two whole nights, besides much of the intervening
day. We got it down to less than half of its original dimensions,
but it was still far too long.
In spite of hard work we had a good time on that committee.
Professor William Draper Lewis, of the University of Pennsylvania,
was chairman and controlled our discussions with great skill. William
Allen White, Chester Rowell, Gifford Pinchot and other enthusiastic
souls made things as lively as possible and the final product was one
of the most notable platforms ever adopted by a political conven-
tion.
It is astonishing, now that the Progressive Party is gone, to see how
many of the things it advocated have been actually written into the
laws either of the Federal Government or of various States.
Again I took an active part in the campaign. The strongest attack
made against Mr. Roosevelt was upon the ground that he was a
candidate for a “third term.” Mr. Taft had warned the people
against the man who intended to hold office for life, and the Demo-
cratic platform had favoured a single term and a constitutional amend-
ment making a President ineligible for re-election. I considered this
objection in my speeches and reminded my hearers that the question
had been carefully weighed by the convention in Philadelphia when
the Federal Constitution was adopted. That convention finally
held that there ought to be no limit as to the number of terms for which
No. 31] The Bolter’s Justification 117
a candidate should be eligible. The reason Washington had declined
a second re-election was not because it would have been injurious
to the public, but because he was personally weary of continuous
service and believed he was entitled to seek the repose of Mt. Vernon.
It was further objected that since Roosevelt had said, when he was
last elected in 1904, that he would not accept another term, he should
therefore not accept it now, although he had been out of office four
years. The thing he then had in mind was the question of successive
terms, with the danger in the control of patronage which this might
involve. But even if it had applied for all time, he had no right to
bind himself to abstain from future service by such a declaration.
When Washington laid down his command of the army at the end of
the Revolution he stated in his circular letter to the Governors, his
“determination of not taking any share in public business thereafter,”
but duty called him to the executive chair and he obeyed. Every
criticism of Roosevelt for becoming a candidate on this ground would
apply also to Washington. j
But neither the excellence of the Progressive platform nor of the
candidate could offset the fact that the Democrats were united while
their opponents were hopelessly divided. Woodrow Wilson was
elected President by an enormous plurality, though not by a majority
of ail the votes.
William Dudley Foulke, A Hoosier Autobiography (New York, Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1922), 157-163.
| ee SSS
31. The Bolter’s Justification (1912)
BY EX-PRESIDENT THEODORE ROOSEVELT
For a detailed account of the circumstances which led to the holding of a bolting
convention in 1912, see No. 30, above.
HE big bosses and the intensely conservative representa-
tives of the moneyed interests have sometimes been divided
from one another in the past. But they were a unit at Chicago,
just as they have tended to become more and more a unit during
recent years throughout the Union. Mr. Taft in the statement he
118 National Administration and Problems [1912
made when informed that he had received the fraudulent nomination
practically announced that the end justified the means, and that it
was so important to beat me and the forces I represented in order
“to save the Constitution” or to “save the State”—the same kind
of excuse that the men of the Red Terror advanced for their actions—
that it would not do to look closely into the methods by which the
feat had been accomplished. This, of course, is the attitude frankly
taken by political bosses of the stamp of Mr. Penrose and Mr. Barnes.
Neither Mr. Barnes nor Mr. Penrose cares a rap for the Republican
party as it was organized in the days of Lincolna—they probably have
not the slightest idea what the Republican party of those days was,
and would regard with measureless scorn the men who founded the
party if they were still alive. They object to me because they know
that the triumph of the forces which for the moment I head means
their elimination from politics. They are fighting for their lives. .
The representatives of big business, and the thousands of smaller
men who in panicky fashion follow their lead, are actuated by slightly
different motives. These representatives of big business work hand
in glove with the big political bosses, although in social life they are
rather ashamed of the association. The trouble with these men is
fundamental. They do not believe in the rule of the people. They
do believe in special privilege. They live in a democracy, and there-
fore they are obliged to pay lip loyalty to democratic forms. But they
thoroughly distrust democracy. Some of them are honestly convinced
that the rule of the people jeopardizes property; that it is right and
proper that privileges should exist; and that privileges and special
interest, masquerading as property rights, should stand above human
rights. Others have no honest convictions of any kind, and merely
feel that they wish to exploit their fellows without interference. But
the two classes, however different their standards of morality, act in
combination. They may not like the bosses, and some of them may
even disapprove of the particular kinds of political immorality obtain-
ing among the bosses. But they regard the retention of privilege as
a vital matter. They feel, that is, that this question is too important
to permit their indulging their personal likings, or even their moral
prejudices, if to do so would jeopardize privilege. They feel that
under actually existing conditions privilege is only safe so long as
the bosses are kept in power. They trust in the courts and the great
No. 31] The Bolter’s Justification IIQ
corporation lawyers; and they become uneasy lest the people them-
selves insist on exercising control over the action of the courts when
the courts buttress privilege. The important thing to them is to
prevent the Government being made in fact what it is in theory.
In their eyes it is vitally necessary that the people shall not be allowed
to rule. They like to keep the people contented, if possible, to cajole
them, to swindle them, to dole out to them gifts of one kind or another.
But they are bound that the people shall not rule themselves and
control their own destinies; for they think that in such event privilege
would be in real danger. Therefore they approve any action necessary
to prevent the triumph of the principles for which I stand. They
rather prefer that the action shall be legal; they rather prefer that it
shall be moral; but they will not hesitate because of any prejudice
in favor of legality or morality if their object can be achieved only
through illegal and immoral methods.
These men regard themselves as the foremost upholders of order
and property. They are very severe in denunciation of that species
of class consciousness which has made certain labor men condone the
actions of the McNamaras, and which has just been openly avowed as
an excuse for violence and lawlessness by certain representatives of
the Industrial Workers of the World. I join with these wealthy men
in their condemnation of those labor people—I believe very few in
number—who excuse violence and murder on the ground that they
are necessary in order to get justice and redress wrong; but I also
point out to these same wealthy men that they are themselves showing
in peculiarly gross form this same class consciousness when, in the
fancied interest of property, and in the real interest of privilege,
they encourage and condone theft and fraud such as that by
which their representatives and agents secured control of the
Chicago Convention. These very wealthy men, these big political
bosses who stole that Convention, are by their actions encourag-
ing exactly the kind of lawless feeling of which, when shown
by other classes, they stand in such dread, and for which they feel
such horror. If the representatives of privilege encourage and condone
the theft of the Presidency in the fancied interest of their own class,
they cannot expect to have their protests heeded when they declaim
against outrage and violence by labor men in the fancied interest
of their own class. The worst blow that can be struck against the
120 National Administration and Problems [r912
cause of law and order is that struck by the big men of great wealth
who by corruption try to overthrow the will of the people. They
are acting in a spirit of as naked class selfishness as that which was
shown by the fanatical extremists among the labor men who condoned
the McNamara dynamiting. They are condoning a far worse outrage,
infinitely more far-reaching in the damage done to the country as a
whole. They fear the people; they care more about retaining the
benefits of privilege than they care for honesty or patriotism; and
therefore they encourage and condone the theft from the people of
their right to rule the country.
These big financial men and big political bosses are able to act ag
they have acted largely because a considerable number of respectable
men, men of means and of good social and business standing, espe-
cially in New York and New England, support them in their actions.
This support is partly obtained by choking the sources of information
by the use of the daily press. Most of the papers of large circulation,
and most of the papers that affect a severe respectability, in New
York, Boston, and other Northeastern cities are directly or indirectly
controlled by the money of the big special interests; and, as many
worthy citizens obtain most of their information on public affairs
from these papers, and are wholly unaware that the sources of their
information are poisoned, they are naturally misled as regards the
rights and wrongs of any issue as to which the big interests deem it
expedient that they should be misinformed. ‘These papers rarely
have any very strong party bias; at least, if they do have a party
preference, it is weak compared to the intensity with which they
fear and hate any man who believes in fundamental reforms affecting
the social and industrial conditions of the people as a whole—although
they are willing enough to support small rose-water reforms, or
reforms of large sound and small substance which do not affect
privilege. Most of these papers cordially supported Judge Parker
against me for President in the election of 1904, in the contest for
the nomination this year they ardently supported Mr. Taft; they
now, for the most part, support Dr. Wilson, although some still cling
to Mr. Taft. What they really wish is to beat me, because they
dread the success of the principles of which in this particular crisis
I am the exponent. They may individually prefer Judge Parker or
Mr. Taft, or Dr. Wilson; but the differences among the three they
No. 31] The Bolter’s Justification 121
regard as negligible when compared with the deep gulf which they
feel separates all three of them from me.
In addition to the respectable support which comes from indi-
viduals who are misinformed, there is also a considerable body of
support from respectable men who do know something of the issue
at stake. They are men who find life easy, who live softly, and who,
instead of feeling that their own good fortune makes it incumbent
on them actively to work for betterment in the life conditions of
others, are overcome by the fear that any such effort to improve the
general welfare would jar the present system sufficiently to cause
them inconvenience. These men abound in the New York and Boston
social and business or professional clubs, in the Boards of Trade and
Chambers of Commerce, in the Bar Associations, in the residential
districts where people of means and leisure dwell. They are free from
physical toil and hardship; they live under conditions that tell for
ease, that indeed tend rather to too much self-indulgent softness, and
therefore, alas! to that dreadful selfishness which is born of fear when
they become alarmed lest the system which has brought about these
pleasant conditions may be changed. These men are not hard-hearted ;
they are charitably inclined; but their vision is narrow, their sympa-
thies are restricted by their inability to realize the feelings and needs
of less fortunate men of harder lives, and they become panic stricken
when required to face the question as to whether our social system
really does justice to these other less fortunate men. When not thus
moved by selfish fear, they stand for morality in public and private
life. But when they become persuaded that the social system which
makes their lives relatively effortless and easy is endangered by a
given man or by a proposed reform, they develop a panic-born immo-
rality which makes them not merely excuse, but eagerly commend,
the theft of a nominating convention, or any other rascality which
in their estimation helps to “save society,” or to “preserve the
Constitution,” or to “repel assaults on the courts”; for these men
under such conditions follow the lead of the great corporation owners
and great corporation lawyers in treating the Constitution and the
courts—quite without warrant—as instruments designed to protect
privilege and vested wrong and to prevent the people from really
ruling themselves. They have apparently been educated to the
point of feeling all this in accentuated form about me, and about the
122 National Administration and Problems [rora
changes I champion. They do not know that most of the things I
advocate have been successfully tried out in a few of our own States—
Wisconsin, for instance, and even Massachusetts—and in foreign
countries such as Germany, Denmark, England, New Zealand,
Switzerland. I am merely trying to get this country to be wise in
time—which is nine-tenths of wisdom. I wish to see oun less fortunate
citizens avoid the dreadful excesses of syndicalism and the like to
which their fellows abroad have been prone. This can only be
accomplished if our people as a whole will formulate and reduce
certain great moral principles which most of us are now dimly begin-
ning to see shape themselves from the confused welter of our business
and our politics. If we do not at least keep step with “the march
of the world conscience,” it will be an evil thing for us and for all
mankind. Moreover, I most earnestly desire that this movement for
justice to the plain people, the common people, this effort to make
moral and economic conditions easier for the average man and average
woman, shall owe its strength neither to fear nor to greed, but to the
honest desire of our people as a whole to treat all men and women
fairly and kindly. I most earnestly hope that in this movement for
social and industrial justice and betterment the lead may be taken
by those among us to whom fate has been kind, who have themselves
nothing material to gain from the movement, and not by those who
are sullen with a sense of personal wrong. This country will not
permanently be a good place for any of us to live in unless we make
it a reasonably good place for all of us to live in.
Theodore Roosevelt, Two Phases of the Chicago Convention, in Outlook (New
York, 1912), CI, 628-630 passim.
No. 32] The Task of the Presidency 123
32. The Task of the Presidency (1925)
BY DIXON MERRITT
Merritt is a journalist and editor, with a long and varied experience. During the
war he was employed on emergency work in the office of the Assistant Secretary of
Agriculture. Washington representative of the Outlook after 1923. Author of
Audubon in Kentucky (1908); History of Tennessee (1913); The Department of Ag-
riculture in the War (1919); The Seventeen-Vear Locust (1919). Merritt’s descrip-
tion of President Coolidge’s household and of a typical day’s routine will give
an idea of the President’s life. For Coolidge see also No. 197 below; William Allen
White, Calvin Coolidge; E. E. Whiting, President Coolidge.
R. COOLIDGE is out of bed before seven o’clock. He always
was, no matter what job he had. With Richard H. Jervis, of the
Secret Service, at his elbow, he goes walking, and he steps along at a
pretty lively clip, usually through the parked places not far from the
White House.
At eight o’clock, just when practically all other Government workers
are doing the same thing, the President sits down to breakfast. He
does not have to hurry so much as most others do because his office is
not so far from his house. He is at his desk when the rest are, at nine
o’clock.
After that, for a clear four hours, the President sits at his desk and
talks to people who want to tell him something or from whom he wants
to extract information. He does no other work than this during the
morning except on Tuesdays and Fridays, when Cabinet meetings
are held.
At one o’clock the President goes home to lunch, a privilege that not
one Government worker in a thousand has. Frequently he takes
some friends with him, and sometimes very important matters are
discussed at the luncheon table.
In the afternoon the President sees no one except chose who assist
him with his work. He is not in to callers. He reads documents that
require his attention, studies out the problems that he must solve,
performs generally the real work of the Presidential office. Frequently
he takes a nap, sometimes on a couch in his office, sometimes in his
bedroom at the White House proper. The only afternoon interruption
he has is on Friday, when he sees the newspaper correspondents.
124 National Administration and Problems [r925
About five o’clock—half an hour after the general run of Govern-
ment workers have left their desks—Mr. Coolidge shuts up shop and
goes for a walk with two members of the Secret Service as his ines-
capable companions. The parked places are not sought for the after-
noon ramble. Frequently he goes through the main business district,
stopping now and then in front of shop windows. When held up by
traffic at street intersections, he usually catches the “go” sign before
the Secret Service man does and is out at least three steps ahead.
By seven o’clock the President is home and ready for dinner. Some-
times he sees friends in the evening, but usually they are gone and he
is in bed by a little after ten o’clock—when nearly everybody else in
Washington is swearing at static.
And that is “all there is to” the routine of being President of the
United States in the year 1925.
If it seems to you that this does not at all comprehend the multiplic-
ity of duties that must be performed at the White House, the answer
is that the White House is a business institution where employees,
grown old in the service, do their own particular tasks without bother-
ing anybody else about them. Except for the private secretary to the
President—who is misnamed and should be called the political secre-
tary to the President—the White House force does not change much
from one Administration to another, or from one decade to another.
A majority of those in important positions have been there twenty
years, some thirty years, a few forty. And they are organized as a
series of sifters, of finer and finer mesh the nearer they approach the
President. No man gets through the last sifter unless he has real
business with the President. . . .
Time was—twice—when letters actually composed by the President
were not so uncommon as they are now. Presidents Roosevelt and
Wilson dictated a large percentage of the letters that bore their names.
No other President of recent times has done so, and Mr. Coolidge does
less of it than most of the others did. But even Mr. Wilson dictated
an average of not more than twenty-five letters a day, and President
Roosevelt only slightly more.
The total number of letters answered at the White House in an
average day when Congress is not in session is about 150. When Con-
gress is in session, the average is about doubled. Under exceptional
circumstances, the number may shoot up to 1,000 a day, and even
No. 32] The Task of the Presidency 125
more. But the regular run of mail to be answered at the White House
is not heavy. Many an obscure office in an executive department
handles several times as many letters.
When a Message is to be written, or a speech, the President does not
write it in the sense that the ordinary man understands as writing a
speech. When the Message to Congress is to be prepared, the White
House asks the various Cabinet officers and heads of departments for
material which they think should be included in the Message. Each
Cabinet officer sends word down the line to his bureau chiefs and his
specialists on various subjects. Finally, a great mass of memoranda
comes to each Cabinet member. His assistant, a specialist on informa-
tion in that department, digests them, and this digest forms the basis
of a memorandum which the Cabinet member sends to the White
House for inclusion in the Message. The White House staff goes over
this material, sifts out the least important, arranges the more im-
portant, and informs the President of what is on hand. He decides
which of the many subjects shall be treated in his Message, and the
material bearing on those subjects is whipped into shape for his use.
A corps of able assistants are at the call of the President for the final
preparation of the Message.
When this point was reached, Wilson used to sit down at a type-
writer and peck out the Message with his own fingers, but other
Presidents have performed the task in a less laborious way. Wilson
produced better literature than most of the others have done, but
the others have dealt just as adequately with current problems. A
Message of the President is no less a Message of the President because
it is not actually written or even not actually dictated by him... .
The persons so far noticed are only a few of those who aid the
President in his work. The social side of the President’s job consti-
tutes no small part of the total. The aids on that side are no less
efficient than those on the official side.
Inside the main door of the White House proper is the office of the
head usher. I. H. Hoover has presided over it for twenty-two years
and has been connected with it for almost forty years. All who enter
the front door are routed by him.
There is a social secretary to the President’s wife. Miss Laura
Harlan, one of the newest of the regular White House staff, occupies
this position. But assisting her in her work is W. E. Rockwell, who
126 National Administration and Problems [1925
has worked on the social side of life at the White House for a great
many years. Under the direction of Miss Harlan and Mr. Rockwell
the bulk of the preliminary social work is done.
When social functions are actually on, the burden falls on Colonel
Cheney, military aid to the President, and on Captain Andrews,
naval aid and commander of the Mayflower.
The President has many assistants in various of his duties who are
not on the roll of White House employees at all. An employee any-
where in the Government may be detailed to the White House. A
law passed a few years ago put a stop to the making of details from
one department to another, but the White House was specifically
excepted.
The Secret Service men, about a dozen of whom are constantly on
duty at the White House, are employees of the Treasury Department
and under the supervision of Secretary Mellon. All of the household
servants, all of the doormen, all of the gardeners and laborers about
the grounds, are on the payroll and under the supervision of the
Superintendent of Buildings and Grounds of the District of Columbia.
W. M. Parnell, a bonded custodian, is responsible for the safety of
every teaspoon in the White House. Likewise Arthur Brooks, another
bonded custodian, is responsible for all the property in the Executive
Offices, down to the rubber bands and paper clips.
Take it all in all, the White House staff is one of the most compre-
hensive and one of the most efficient business organizations in the
Government not merely, but anywhere in the United States. Every
President when he begins his duties has ready to his hand something
that most men strive for through a lifetime and few ever attain—
a staff of tried subordinates, each a competent specialist in his own
line. .
The heart of the present misconception of the terrible weight of
the President’s work is in the belief that two Presidents recently have
been worked to death. The fact is that Wilson, though he was one
of the hardest workers that the White House has known, was in
better health there than he ever was anywhere else. He came to
the White House a frail man suffering from a chronic disease. He
had worked himself to death in his years as a teacher. It was his
custom all his life to work ceaselessly for days on end, until he was
exhausted, and then to sleep the clock around twice. He picked up
No. 32] The Task of the Presidency 127
weight and vitality after he came to the White House. The improve-
ment in his appearance was a marvel to those who knew him earlier.
The war, the trips to Paris, the final trip to take his appeal to the
country—these did break him down, but he would probably have
died sooner than he did if he had never left Princeton.
Harding was almost the opposite of Wilson in nearly every particu-
lar. Hard work was out of his line. The duties of the Presidency
irked him terribly, but it is not true that the weight of responsibility
wrecked him. Those who knew him at work say that he was practi-
cally impervious to worry. Harding simply got sick and died. If
there is anything more than that to the story, it is locked behind that
secret door to which the pry of the reporter does not constitute a key.
We have now in the White House another man who came there
none too robust. Mr. Coolidge has gained eight pounds since he
became President, and the change in his appearance, while not as
striking as the improvement that Wilson underwent, is marked.
Very clearly, he is not a man worked to death. His former private
secretary, Mr. Slemp, recently said in a magazine article, “ Calvin
Coolidge will thrive on the tasks of the Presidency.” . . .
The hopeful sign is that during all these recent years the tendency
has been toward relieving the President of burdens and leaving him
more nearly free to devote himself to uninterrupted study of the
great problems of the country. ...
When we have relieved the President of his burdens which are
mainly political, he will be able with our help to struggle along under
his burdens which are purely official.
Dixon L. Merritt, Calvin Coolidge and His Job, in Outlook (New York, 1925), CXL,
103-107 passim.
CHAPTER VII— PACIFIC DEPENDENCIES
AND POLICIES
33. Prisoners in Peking (1900)
BY PROFESSOR LUELLA MINER
Professor Miner held a chair in the American College at Tungchau, China, at
the time of the Boxer Rebellion of 1900. The purpose of that movement was in
part to drive foreigners out of China.—Bibliography: Kenneth S. Latourette, De-
velopment of China; W. W. Rockhill, “Affairs in China,” in United States Foreign
Relations (1901); A. B. Hart, The Obvious Orient (1911).
June 15.— BOUT ten o’clock the most horrible noise began
in the southern city, just on the opposite side of
the city wall. It was a horde of Boxers going through their rites,
burning incense, crying, “Kill the foreign devils! Kill the secondary
foreign devils! (Christians.) Kill! Kill! Kill!” They called other
things, but I could only distinguish the “kill!” There may have
been from twenty to fifty thousand voices, not all Boxers, swelling
that mad tumult. After two or three hours the noise suddenly
ceased. The Boxers in their indiscriminate pillaging had looted a
Mohammedan bank. The Mohammedans gathered a band of three
hundred, pursued them, and got back their money, after which the
mob dispersed.
Our lines of defense have been extended to include all the streets
bordering on this mission property—three or four streets and alleys
being under martial law—and all passers-by are challenged. The
same conditions prevail on Legation Street—stray Boxers are captured
and passers-by are challenged. The missionaries and Chinese who
have weapons all help in guard duty. There are barbed-wire barri-
cades at the end of each street. ... This morning four of the
missionaries took their guns and, accompanied by the Chinese to do
the buying, started out to the shops, and came back with everything
128
No. 33] Prisoners in Peking 120
they tried to get. Of course they paid the shopkeepers, though they
did have to take out their pistols before business opened up very
briskly.
Now, in the compound and adjoining streets we have barricade
within barricade of barbed wire or brick, all the walls and some of
the small buildings having been torn up to get brick. This is said
to be the best fortified place in the city now, thanks to the free labor
of our numerous refugees, and if we had a Gatling or machine gun
we would feel quite safe... .
Evening.—This forenoon ten Americans and twenty Russians went
to the south cathedral, where the Boxers were looting, burning, and
killing, killed seventy Boxers, captured ten, and took Catholic refugees
to a place near the British Legation. In the afternoon twenty-five
Germans and an equal number of French went to the same place,
with much the same result, though not quite so many Boxers were
killed, I think.
Mr. Tewksbury, Dr. Ingram, Mr. Ewing, and Dr. Inglis just went
to the city gate near us, closed it, and brought the key here with
them. The official in charge of the gate will be obliged to come here
in the morning to get the key before the gate can be opened... .
June 18.—We have now spent ten full days in this place, and may
be obliged to spend many more, for we can get no word from our
foreign troops who left Tientsin a week ago yesterday. Since the
trouble broke out in the city we have sent three messengers, offering
a high reward if they should get through to Captain McCalla and
inform him of our peril, but they have all returned reporting that
jt was impossible to get through the hordes of Boxers between us and
ourarmy....
We are more effectively cut off from the world than ever, for no
couriers can now be found to carry mail to Tientsin for the Imperial
post-office. We have been surprised that they have succeeded in
keeping up the service so long. We hope that in two or three days
communication will be open again. We hear that vast numbers of
Boxers attacked the railroad station in Tientsin and were repulsed
with great slaughter. It is rumored that the relief army is now only
ten or fifteen miles from us, but we cannot be sure.
Placards are being distributed everywhere in the city commanding
that this place and Legation Street be destroyed to-day. Word to
130 Pacific Dependencies and Policies [1900
the same effect has also been brought in by some of our Christian
Chinese who are staying outside. It is said that the Chinese general
Tung-Fu-Hsiang has told the Boxers that if they do not wipe out
these remaining foreign places soon, he will take his soldiers off and
will not help them any more. Another fire has been started near us
in the southern city, and five fires can be seen in the western part
of this city, far away from us... .
Over seventy of us American missionaries live, eat, and sleep in
the little church at the British Legation, though a few of the ladies
sleep in Lady Macdonald’s ballroom, two or three in the billiard-room,
and some of the men outdoors. In the church we all sleep on the
floor or on the church seats. There are thirty-five in our Congrega-
tional crowd, about twenty Methodists, and sixteen Presbyterians,
We eat by denominations, but there is only one tiny stove to cook
over, so we cannot cook much. If we are besieged long, we shall
have to go on short rations. In fact, we are now leaving most of the
canned meats for the men, who are doing hard work outside, watching
and fortifying. ...
Yesterday afternoon, after several hours of firing, all under the
cover of buildings or barricades, a white flag was run up by the
Chinese 3oldiers north of us, close by the wall of the Imperial City.
Then the message was sent that there was an Imperial edict com-
manding the soldiers to stop shooting and setting fires and to protect
the Foreign Ministers. The edict would be sent to us later. Few of
us were taken in by this subterfuge, though some thought there
really might be a genuine edict forthcoming, occasioned by the possible
nearness of the relief army. The Government would be quite capable
of laying down arms in such an event, and pretending that it was
only the mob which had been fighting the foreigners. No copy of
an edict was sent us later, and when the Chinese soldiers made attacks
at midnight on this place—the American Legation and the refuge—
they were the only surprised ones, for extra precautions were taken
last night to guard against attack. ...
Some horses which were turned into the street between our barri-
cades have been shot, and consequently we have a new delicacy
added to our bill of fare. We call it “French roast beef.” This
morning it was prepared in the form of curry to eat with our rice.
After eating our cornmeal mush there was a break in the meal, and
——
No. 33] Prisoners in Peking 131
when someone asked Miss Haven, who was helping to wait on the
table, what was the reason for the delay, she patly replied, “The
horse has not been curried yet.” .. .
July 18.—About two o’clock this afternoon—four weeks to an
hour from the time when we took refuge in this Legation—we received
our first authentic message from the outside world. On June 30 a
Methodist young man was sent by the Japanese Minister as a mes-
senger to Tientsin, and he has just returned, bringing a letter from
the Japanese Consul in Tientsin, stating that foreign troops numbering
33,300 will leave Tientsin about the 2oth, day after tomorrow, for
the relief of Peking. Ina way, this is discouraging, for now we cannot
hope day by day for their arrival; but with this great force they will
come up with practically no resistance, and the strain and stress of
this terrible siege is over... .
August 14.—At last our ears have heard the sweet music for which
we have been listening for two months—the cannonading of the
relief army—so plainly that we know that intense desire and imagina-
tion are not deceiving us, as so many times before. Our deliverance
is at hand. Last night was a fearful one. There were at least six
distinct attacks, the first beginning about eight in the evening, and
there was almost incessant firing between these attacks. Our implac-
able foes seemed determined to use to the utmost this last chance
to wipe us out. Our garrison returned fire more than at any other
time, for now they are not afraid of exhausting their ammuni-
Hones
It was a little after two in the afternoon, as I was sitting writing
under the trees in the tennis-court, where I have spent so many
hours during these past weeks, when an American marine from the
city wall ran into the yard shouting, “The troops are inside the
city—almost here!” There was a wild rush for the south end of the
compound, and there, sheltered by the barricades, we stood and saw
the first of the relief army straggling up the streets. And who do you
think they were? Black-faced, high-turbaned troops, Rajpunts from
India—great, fierce-looking fellows, but their faces were beaming with
joy, and they hurrahed louder than we did. There were British
officers with them, and one of them stooped in passing and kissed a
pale-faced girlie who looked as if she needed to be rescued by a relief
army. All that afternoon the troops came streaming in, Sihks,
132 Pacific Dependencies and Policies [1907
Bengal Lancers, English soldiers, and, most welcome of all, our
American boys.
Luella Miner, A Prisoner in Peking, in Outlook, November 10, 17, 24, 1900 (New
York), 641-671 passim.
34. Progress in the Philippines (1907)
BY SECRETARY WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT
Chief Justice Taft was Secretary of War in Roosevelt’s Cabinet. In February
1900, he was placed at the head of a commission to exercise legislative jurisdiction
in the Philippines; and, from July 4, 1901, to February 1, 1904, he was Governor-
General. He was sent to represent the government of the United States at the first
opening of the Philippine Assembly—one of the steps toward self-government
by the Islands.—Bibliography: Charles B. Elliott, The Philippines to the End of
Commission Government; J. A. Le Roy, Americans in the Philippines; D. C. Wor-
cester, Philippines, Past and Present; J. G. Schurman, Philippine A fairs; W. Cam-
eron Forbes, The Philippine Islands.
ENTLEMEN OF THE ASSEMBLY: President Roosevelt has
sent me to convey to you and the Filipino people his con-
gratulations upon another step in the enlargement of popular self-
government in these Islands. I have the greatest personal pleasure
in being the bearer of this message. It is intended for each and every
member of the Assembly, no matter what his views upon the issues
which were presented in the late electoral campaign. It assumes that
he is loyal to the government in which he now proposes, under oath
of allegiance, to take part. It does not assume that he may not have
a wish to bring about, either soon or in the far future, by peaceable
means, a transfer of sovereignty; but it does assume that while the
present government endures, he will loyally do all he lawfully can to
uphold its authority and to make it useful to the Filipino people.
I am aware that, in view of the issues discussed at the election of
this Assembly, I am expected to say something regarding the policy
of the United States toward these Islands. Before attempting any
such task, it is well to make clear the fact that I can not speak with
the authority of one who may control that policy. . . .
Our Philippine policy has been subjected to the severest condemna-
tion by critics who occupy points of view as widely apart as the two
No. 34] Progress in the Philippines 123
poles. There are those who say that we have gone too fast, that we
have counted on the capacity of the Filipino for political development
with a foolish confidence leading to what they regard as the disastrous
result of this election. There are others who assert that we have de-
nied the Filipino that which is every man’s birthright—to govern
himself—and have been guilty of tyranny and a violation of American
principles in not turning the government over to the people of the
Islands at once.
With your permission, I propose to consider our policy in the light
of the events of the six years during which it has been pursued, to
array the difficulties of the situation which we have had to meet and
to mention in some detail what has been accomplished. . . .
Let us consider in some detail what progress has been made:
First. To repeat what I have said, the Islands are in a state of tran-
quillity. On this very day of the opening of the National Assembly,
there has never been a time in the history of the Islands when peace
and good order have prevailed more generally. The difficulties pre-
sented by the controversies arising with and concerning the Roman
Catholic Church have either been completely settled or are in process
of satisfactory adjustment on a basis of justice and equity.
Second. Most noteworthy progress has been made in the spread of
general education. One of the obstacles to the development of this
people speaking half a dozen or more different native dialects was a
lack of common language, which would furnish a medium of sympa-
thetic touch with modern thought and civilization. The dense igno-
rance of a very large proportion of the people emphasized the necessity
for a general educational system. English was the language of the
sovereign power, English was the business language of the Orient,
English was the language in which was thought and written the
history of free institutions and popular government, and English was
the language to which the common people turned with eagerness to
learn. A system of education was built up, and to-day upward of
half a million children are being taught to read, write, and recite
English. It is not an exaggeration to assert that now more native
Filipinos speak English than Spanish, although Spanish was the lan-
guage of the ruling race in these Islands for more than two hundred
and fifty years. English is not so beautiful as the Spanish language,
but it is more likely to prove of use to the Filipinos for the reasons I
134 Pacific Dependencies and Policies [1907
have given. The strongest basis for our confidence in the future of
the Filipino people is the eagerness with which the opportunities ex-
tended for education in English have been seized by the poor and
ignorant parents of these Islands for their children. Itis alike pathetic
and encouraging.
I am not one of those who believe that much of the public money
should be expended here for university or advanced education. Per-
haps one institution merely to form a type of higher education may
be established at Manila or at some other suitable place in the Islands,
and special schools to develop needed scientific professions may be
useful, but the great part of the public funds expended for education
should be used in the spread of primary education and of industrial
education—that education which shall fit young men to be good
farmers, good mechanics, good skilled laborers, and shall teach them
the dignity of labor and that it is no disgrace for the son of a good
family to learn his trade and earn his livelihood by it. The higher
education is well for those who can use it to advantage, but it too
often fits a man to do things for which there is no demand, and unfits
him for work which there are too few to do. The enlargement of
opportunity for higher education may well await private beneficence
or be postponed to a period when the calls upon the Island Treasury
for other more important improvements have ceased. We have laid
the foundation of a primary and industrial educational system here
which, if the same spirit continues in the Government, will prove to be
the most lasting benefit which has been conferred on these Islands by
Americans.
Third. We have introduced here a health department which is
gradually teaching the people the necessity for sanitation. In the
years to come, when the great discoveries of the world are recited,
that which will appear to have played as large a part as any in the
world’s progress in the current hundred years will be the discovery of
proper sanitary methods for avoiding disease in the Tropics. The
introduction of such methods, the gradual teaching of the people the
simple facts affecting hygiene, unpopular and difficult as the process
of education has been, will prove to be another one of the great benefits
given by Americans to this people. . . .
Fourth. A judicial system has been established in the Islands
which has taught the Filipines the possibility of the independence
No. 34] Progress in the Philippines 135
of a judiciary. This must be of enduring good to the people of the
Islands. The personnel of the judges is divided between Americans
and Filipinos, both for the purpose of aiding the Americans to learn
and administer civil law and of enabling the Filipinos to learn and
administer justice according to a system prevailing in a country where
the judiciary is absolutely independent of the executive or legislative
branches of the Government. Charges have been made that individual
judges and particular courts have not been free from executive con-
trol and have not been without prejudices arising from the race of the
particular judge who sat in the court, but on the whole an impartial
review of the six years’ history of the administration of justice will
show that the system has been productive of the greatest good and
that right has been sustained without fear or favor. It is entirely
natural that a system which departs from the principles of that in
which one has been educated should at times attract his severe
animadversion, and as the system here administered partakes of two
systems, it is subject to the criticism of those trained in each. ...
Fifth. We come to the matter of public improvements. The port
of Manila has been made into a harbor which is now as secure as any
in the Orient, and which, with the docking facilities that are now being
rapidly constructed, will be as convenient and as free from charge
and burden as any along the Asiatic coast. The improvements in
Iloilo and Cebu harbors, the other two important ports of the Islands,
are also rapidly progressing. Road building has proceeded in the
Islands, both at the instance of the Central Government and through
the agency of the provinces. The difficulties of road building and road
maintaining in the Philippines are little understood by those not
familiar with the difficulty of securing proper material to resist the
enormous wear and tear caused by the torrential downpours of the
rainy season. Progress in this direction must necessarily be gradual,
for the Islands are a poor country, comparatively speaking, and
roads are expensive. ...
When the Americans came to the Islands there was one railroad
120 miles long, and that was all. In spite of circumstances, which
I have already detailed, making capital reluctant to come here, con-
tracts have now been entered into, that are in the course of fulfill-
ment, which in five years will give to the Islands a railroad mileage of
1,000 miles. The construction of these roads will involve the invest-
136 Pacific Dependencies and Policies [1907
ment of twenty to thirty millions of dollars, and that in itself means an
added prosperity to the country, additional demands for labor, and
the quickening of all the nerves of trade. When the work is finished,
it means a great additional profit to agriculture, a very great enlarge-
ment of the export capacity of the Islands, and a substantial elevation
of the material condition of the people. .. .
The government now maintains and operates a more complete
system of posts, telephones, and telegraphs than ever before in the
history of the Islands. Seventy-five per cent of the 652 municipalities
now established in these Islands have post-offices, in 235 of which
there are now opened for business postal savings banks. The telegraph
or telephone now connects all of the provincial capitals with Manila
and more than go offices are now open for business. Appropriation
has been made to provide for a system of rural free delivery. ...
Sixth. We have inaugurated a civil service law for the selection of
civil servants upon the merit system. On the whole it has worked
well. It has grown with our experience and has improved with the
disclosure of its defects.
One of the burning questions which constantly presents itself in
respect to the civil service of a Government like this is, how far it shall
be American and how far Filipino. In the outset it was essential that
most of the civil servants of the government should be Americans.
The government was English speaking, and the practical difficulty of
having subordinates who did not speak that language prevented large
employment of Filipinos. Then their lack of knowledge of the Amer-
ican governmental and business methods had the same tendency.
The avowed policy of the government has been to employ Filipinos
wherever, as between them and Americans, the Filipinos can do
equally good work. This has given rise to frequent and bitter crit-
icism, because it has been improperly assumed that every time that
there has been a vacancy, it could be filled by a Filipino. There are
two great advantages in the employment of Filipinos—one is that this
is the government of the Filipinos and they ought to be employed
where they can be, and the other is that their employment is a matter
of economy for the government, because they are able to live more
cheaply and economically in the Islands than Americans and so can
afford to receive less salary. There has therefore been a constant
reduction of American employees and an increase of Filipinos. This
No. 34] Progress in the Philippines 137
has not been without its disadvantage because it makes competent
American employees feel an uncertainty of tenure, and materially
affects their hope of promotion and their interest in the government
of which they are a part. This disadvantage I believe can be largely
obviated: <2...
Seventh. In the progress which has heen made, I should mention
the land system, the provision for homestead settlement, for free
patents, and for perfecting of imperfect titles by land registration.
The homestead settlements under the law were very few for several
years, but I am delighted to learn that during 1907 they reached
4,000 and the free patents applied for were 10,600. It is probable
that the machinery for land registration, though necessary, is too
expensive, and it will be for you to decide whether, in view of the
great public benefit that good land titles will bring to the country,
it may not be wise to reduce the cost of registration to the landowner
and charge the expense to the government. Capital will not be ad-
vanced to the farmer uniess his title is good, and the great benefit
of an agricultural bank can never be realized until the registration of
titles is greatly increased. ...
The condition of agriculture in the Islands while generally much
improved in the last three years is still unsatisfactory in many parts
of the Islands, due not only to the continued scarcity of cattle but also
to the destructive effect of the typhoon of 1905 upon the hemp cul-
ture. This has properly led to the suspension of the land tax for an-
other year and the meeting of half the deficit in provincial and munic ;
ipal treasuries thus produced, out of the central treasury.
The production of rice has, however, materially increased. It is also
a source of satisfaction to note that the exports from the Islands,
which are wholly agricultural, are larger in value by half a million
gold dollars than ever in the history of the Islands. One of the chief
duties of this Assembly is to devote its attention and practical knowl-
edge to measures for the relief of agriculture.
Eighth. The financial condition of the Philippine government is
quite satisfactory, and so, too, iz the state of the money and cur-
rency of the Islands. There is a bonded indebtedness for the purchase
of the friar lands amounting to $7,000,000, for the waterworks and
sewage of Manila of $3,000,000, and for public works amounting to
$3,500,000. Sinking funds have been established for all of these. The
138 Pacific Dependencies and Policies [1914
price paid for the friar lands was a round one and may result, after
the lands are disposed of, in some net pecuniary loss to the Govern-
ment, but the political benefit of the purchase was a full justification.
The lands will be disposed of to the tenants as rapidly as the public
interest will permit. . .
Before discussing the Assembly, I wish to give attention to one re-
port that has been spread to the four corners of the globe, and which,
if credited, might have a pernicious effect in these Islands. I refer
to the statement that the American Government is about to sell the
Islands to some Asiatic or European power. Those who credit such
a report little understand the motives which actuated the American
people in accepting the burden of this Government. The majority
of the American people are still in favor of carrying out our Philippine
policy as a great altruistic work. . . . I do not hesitate to pronounce
the report that the Government contemplates the transfer of these
Islands to any foreign power as utterly without foundation. It has
never entered the mind of a single person in the Government respon-
sible for the Administration.
Address of the Secretary of War at Inauguration of Philippine Assembly, October
16, 1907 (Manila, Bureau of Printing, 1907), 81-94 passim.
35. Alaska (1914)
BY BELMORE BROWNE
This is an artist’s account of our northernmost Territory, which was once called
“Seward’s Folly” and was regarded as a tremendous extravagance when Secretary
Seward negotiated its purchase in 1867 for $7,200,000. It was organized as a Ter-
ritory in 1912. Mr. Browne, the artist-author, has written several books about
the Northwest.—General bibliography: W. F. Willoughby, Territories and De-
pre: W. D. Boyce, United States Colonies and Dependencies. Special bib-
iography on Alaska: Scott C. Bone, Alaska, its Past, Present and Future (1924);
J. Nichols, Alaska (1924); A. W. Greely, Handbook of Alaska (1925); John J.
Underwood, Alaska, and Empire in the Making (1925); Mrs. Ella (Rhoads)
Higginson, Alaska, the Great Country (1926); G. W. Spicer, Constitutional Status and
Government of Alaska (1927).
NE reason why Alaska is not better understood is that it went
down on the map under one name; for in reality the “big land
up yonder” possesses about as many different kinds of climate and
geographic features as Newfoundland, Labrador, New Brunswick,
i
No. 35] Alaska 130
Iceland, the North Pole, and—yes, Pennsylvania. The reasons for
these differences in climate are first the Japan Current, and secondly
the great mountain barriers that follow the coast from the southern-
most boundary to the island of Attu. This huge stretch of coast
is as long as the distance that separates New York and San Francisco,
and lying in a great semicircle athwart the course of the Japan Current
it absorbs the warmth of the current-born winds of the South Pacific.
Even then, if the coast were low and flat, the winds would pass in-
land, and their influence would be distributed over a much larger area;
but the towering mountains form a wall along the entire coast, and
hold the humid clouds back until they have cast down their last drop
of moisture. The result is that at some parts of this coast the winters
are warmer than those of New York. This in a general way holds
true of Southeastern Alaska. At the northern part of the circle,
formed by Cook Inlet, the Kenai Peninsula, Prince William Sound, and
the Fairweather Range, heavy falls of snow take the place of rain.
The unusual snowfall, which reaches as much as sixty feet in a season,
accounts for the large number of glaciers along the coast; but close
to the beaches the effect of the snow is neutralized by the salt water.
Thus we have already divided this long strip of coast into two parts,—
the southern or rainy part, and the northern or snowy part.
Back from the coast lies the mountainous strip, and inside of this
protecting wall we come to what Alaskans call the “Interior.” The
Interior is by far the largest part of Alaska, and is formed, roughly,
by the valleys of the Yukon, the Tanana, the Kuskokwim, the great
wilderness of mountains and tundra that lies between the Yukon and
the Arctic Ocean. Here again we find a difference in the climate; for
the same mountains that make the coast wet in turn keep the Interior
dry, by shutting out the moist winds of the Pacific. The result is
that the Interior is dry and cold, and the snowfall is in consequence
very light.
Beginning our travels in Southeastern Alaska necessitates going
by water; for a strip of British Columbia 450 miles in length separates
Alaska from the state of Washington. As you leave Puget Sound
behind the scenery grows more beautiful, until at the southern bound-
ary line the steamer enters a wilderness of rugged islands that stretch
away like a solid wall along the fiord-gashed coast.
Shortly after crossing the line yeu come to Ketchikan, the southern-
140 Pacific Dependencies and Policies |. 914
most town of importance in Alaska. The entire population turns out
at sound of the whistle, for the arrival of a steamer is an important
event and in a few minutes you find yourself in the thick of an Alaska
crowd. The resultant feeling is one of satisfaction; for the composite
picture resolves itself into a blend of broad shoulders, clear brown
skins, good-natured smiles, and unlimited self-confidence.
As you steam onward you begin to realize the extent of the natural
obstacles that the Alaskan is called upon to overcome. To the west-
ward stretch islands, nothing but islands; to the eastward rises the
Coast Range, with deep-green fiords running away through their
snow-streaked walls, —a maze of waterways that makes your head
swim, and increases your respect for the men who unraveled it. Now
and then the Pacific breaks through the protecting islands, and the
steamer rolls slowly to the pulse of the sea; while schools of whales
blow against the distant headlands. A few years ago the whales cruised
these waters in safety; but now small, power-driven whalers, armed
with bomb guns, are ceaselessly searching among the islands, and
every year finds the fleet working farther north.
During the days that follow you are always hemmed in by fiords,
mountains, and islands. Among the natural harbors are copper mines
and salmon canneries. When the steamer stops by the rough wharves
you will see Alaska Indians loading the cases of fish, pulling the nets,
or paddling their high-prowed canoes. They are a strong, smooth-
skinned, black-haired lot, and look for all the world like the Japanese
that work beside them.
A short walk ashore will take you to a salmon river, where the fish
are jammed in solid silver masses in the pools. Beyond lies a mosquito-
haunted jungle of devils-club, down timber, berry bushes, and twisted
alders. Here a day’s travel is computed in yards instead of miles,
and if you are hardy enough to force your way through it you will
return to the steamer with increased respect for the pioneer, and many
rents in your clothing and anatomy.
For 350 miles the steamer glides northward through the Alaska
Archipelago. As it advances the mountains carry a heavier mantle
of snow, and an occasional glacier sweeps downward out of blue moun-
tain fastnesses and joins the sea; but you are still lost in a maze of
rugged islands when you enter Gastineau Channel and see Juneau
\ying at the feet of towering mountains.
No. 35] Alaska IAI
Juneau is the capital of Alaska, and in addition is the most pic-
turesquely situated settlement on the Alaska coast. Huge mountains
tower above the huddled houses, and a white government building
lends dignity to the town. Across the channel clouds of steam rising
above a great scar in the mountainside mark the site of Treadwell,
the largest gold stampmill in the world, and on a quiet day you can
hear the subdued roar of the hammers, ceaselessly crushing the pre-
cious quartz.
North of Juneau, on another waterway, lies Skagway, the salt-
water terminus of the White Pass & Yukon Railroad. Skagway was
the Mecca of gold seekers in the days of the Klondike rush; for it was
over these mountains that the line of human ants crawled on their
way to the Yukon. The successful ones sometimes spent months in
reaching their goal. Now the railroad takes you across in a few
hours. Farther still to the westward lies Sitka, the little settlement
wherein were enacted many of the lurid pages of Alaska’s early
history. Under Russian rule it was the most important settlement in
Alaska. .
At Sitka Southeastern Alaska comes to an end, and it is at this
point that the tourist steamers turn back. In reality, however, we
have reached only the gateway; for to see the real Alaska, the land of
immense distances, of stupendous glaciers and towering mountains,
you must travel northward for many days beyond the floe-dotted
waters of Icy Strait. Once you have left the islands behind there is
no turning aside until, having skirted 300 miles of icebound coast,
you enter the calm waters of Price William Sound. Every foot of this
bleak beach is backed by the huge, ice-capped peaks of the Fairweather
and St. Elias Ranges. Nowhere in the world is there more impressive
scenery.
On the second day you come to a great headland of naked rock
which rises above a smother of foam, and beyond the uneasy surging
of the sea tells of hidden reefs that girdle it. This is Cape St. Elias.
A more grim and impressive headland could not be imagined. Be-
hind its bulwarks of cliffs and reefs lies Yakutat Bay, the only harbor
for large boats on this coast. It is a quiet little harbor, far removed
from the outside world. The steamer comes to rest before a salmor
cannery, where a short railroad brings the silver fish from a near-by
river, Yakutat Indians paddle over the water in their queerly fash-
142 Pacific Dependencies and Policies [1914
ioned canoes, and on clear days Mount St. Elias hangs like a cloud in
the northern sky.
The great peak stands on the r4rst meridian, and it forms the
monument that marks the point where the Alaska boundary turns
from the coast and stretches away 600 miles to the Arctic. Around it
lies the sea of ice called the Malaspina Glacier. Topographers tell
us that this glacier, including the snowfields that feed it, covers 5,000
square miles... .
Among these wild surroundings the Alaska prospector is hard at
work, and many mines, ranging from small veins to the large copper
deposits on Latouche Island, speak of the richness of the region.
Fox raising is being practised with success on some of the more
isolated islands, and as you go farther westward to the mountains
and valleys of the Kenai Peninsula you come to a splendid hunt-
ing ground, where the white sheep and the world’s largest moose
abound.
Between the Kenai Peninsula and Attu, the westernmost of the
Aleutian Islands, lies more than 15,000 miles of coast before you
enter the great sweep of Bering Sea and the Arctic. In the entire
stretch of more than 7,000 miles Nome is the only town well known
in the outside world.
Besides being one of the world’s greatest mining camps, Nome each
winter is the scene of the Alaska dog team races. The race is called
the All-Alaska Sweepstake, and is participated in by the pick of
northern dog teams, over a 400-mile course. From the viewpoint
of endurance, physical condition, and courage it is the world’s greatest
sporting event.
Contrary to general opinion, wintertime is the season of travel; and
when the snow is packed hard the jingle of dog bells is heard through-
out the land. Almost every pound of freight that is moved in Alaska
in the winter is pulled by dogs, and from the time that the ice closes
navigation they become the most important factor in transportation.
Inheriting the courage and endurance of their wolf ancestors, they
perform the hardest labor on the smallest food supply. Money,
thought, and labor are spent lavishly in perfecting the teams, and
from the decorated harness, with its red pompons and silver bells,
down to the skilfully constructed “Nome” sleds, every detail speaks
of strength and service.
No. 36] Patriarchal Hawaii 143
Although I have traveled for many years in Alaska, it was my
last journey through the Interior that opened my eyes to the possi-
bilities of our great northern possession. What I saw was a huge
land of rolling uplands trampled by wild game, of great rivers teeming
with edible fish, of rich valleys where adventurous farmers were
already breaking the soil, of mines of copper and ccal and gold; in
fact, a land of golden opportunities, or, in the language of our last
frontier, “a white man’s country.”
Belmore Browne, Alaska, in The Mentor, December 1, 1914 (New York), No. 72,
2-11,
36. Patriarchal Hawaii (1916)
BY CHARMIAN K. LONDON (1922)
Mrs. London is the widow of the widely known American novelist, Jack London.
Besides Our Hawaii, she has published The Log of the Snark (1917) and The Book of
Jack London (2 vols., 1921).
AWAII is a Paradise—and I can never cease proclaiming it;
but I must append one word of qualification: Hawaii is a
paradise for the well-to-do. It is not a paradise for the unskilled laborer
from the mainland, nor for the person without capital from the
mainland. The one great industry of the islands is sugar. The
unskilled labor for the plantations is already here. Also, the white
unskilled laborer, with a higher standard of living, cannot compete
with coolie labor, and, further, the white laborer cannot and will
not work in the canefields.
For the person without capital, dreaming to start on a shoestring
and become a capitalist, Hawaii is the last place in the world. It
must be remembered that Hawaii is very old—comparatively.
When California was a huge cattle ranch for hides and tallow (the
meat being left where it was skinned), Hawaii was publishing news-
papers and boasting schools of higher learning. During the early
years of the gold rush, before the soil of California was scratched with
a plow, Hawaii kept a fleet of ships busy carrying her wheat, and
flour, and potatoes to California, while California was sending her
144 Pacific Dependencies and Policies [1915
children down to Hawaii to be educated. The shoestring days are
past. The land and industries of Hawaii are owned by old families
and large corporations, and Hawaii is only so large.
But the homesteader may object, saying that he has read the reports
of the millions of acres of government land in Hawaii which are his
for the homesteading. But he must remember that the vastly larger
portion of this government land is naked lava rock and not worth
ten cents a square mile to a homesteader, and that much of the
remaining land, while rich in soil values, is worthless because it is
without water. The small portion of good government land is leased
by the plantations. Of course, when these leases expire, they may be
homesteaded. It has been done in the past. But such homesteaders,
after making good their titles, almost invariably sell out their holdings
in fee simple to the plantations. There is reason for it. There are
various reasons for it.
Even the skilled laborer is needed only in small, definite numbers.
Perhaps I cannot do better than quote the warning circulated by the
Hawaiian Promotion Committee: “No American is advised to come
here in search of employment unless he has some definite work in
prospect, or means enough to maintain himself for some months and
to launch into some enterprise. Clerical positions are well filled;
common labor is largely performed by Japanese or native Hawaiians,
and the ranks of skilled labor are also well supplied.”
For be it understood that Hawaii is patriarchial rather than demo-
cratic. Economically it is owned and operated in a fashion that is a
combination of twentieth century, machine-civilization methods and
of medieval feudal methods. Its rich lands, devoted to sugar, are
farmed not merely as scientifically as any land is farmed anywhere
in the world, but, if anything, more scientifically. The last word in
machinery is vocal here, the last word in fertilizing and agronomy,
and the last word in scientific expertness. In the employ of the
Planters’ Association is a corps of scientific investigators who wage
unceasing war on the insect and vegetable pests and who are on the
travel in the remotest parts of the world recruiting and shipping to
Hawaii insect and micro-organic allies for the war.
The Sugar Planters’ Association and the several sugar factors or
financial agencies control sugar, and, since sugar is king, control the
destiny and welfare of the Islands. And they are able to do this
No. 36] Patriarchal Hawaii 145
under the peculiar conditions that obtain, far more efficiently than
it could be done by the population of Hawaii were it a democratic
commonwealth, which it essentially is not. Much of the stock in
these corporations is owned in small lots by members of the small
business and professional classes. The larger blocks are held by
families who, earlier in the game, ran their small plantations for
themselves, but who learned that they could not do it so well and
so profitably as the corporations which, with centralized management,
could hire far better brains for the entire operation of the industry,
from planting to marketing, than was possessed by the heads of the
families. As a result, absentee ownership or landlordship has come
about. Finding the work done better for them than they could do
it themselves, they prefer to live in their Honolulu and seaside and
mountain homes, to travel much, and to develop a cosmopolitanism
and culture that never misses shocking the traveler or newcomer with
surprise. All of which makes this class in Hawaii as cosmopolitan
as any class to be found the world over. Of course, there are notable
exceptions to this practice of absentee landlordism, and such men
run their own plantations and corporations and are active as sugar
factors and in the management of the Planters’ Association.
Yet will I dare to assert that no owning class on the mainland is
so conscious of its social responsibility as is this owning class of
Hawaii, and especially that portion of it which has descended out
of the old missionary stock. Its charities, missions, social settlements,
kindergartens, schools, hospitals, homes, and other philanthropic
enterprises are many; its activities are unceasing; and some of its
members contribute from twenty-five to fifty per cent of their incomes
to the work for the general good.
But all the foregoing, it must be remembered, is not democratic
nor communal but is distinctly feudal. The coolie and peasant labor
possesses no vote, while Hawaii is after all only a territory, its governor
appointed by the President of the United States, its one delegate
sitting in Congress at Washington but denied the right to vote in
that body. Under such conditions, it is patent that the small class
of large land-owners finds it not too difficult. to control the small
vote in local politics. Some of the large land-owners are Hawaiian or
part Hawaiian, as are practically all the smaller land-owners. And
these and the land-holding whites are knit together by a common
146 Pacific Dependencies and Policies [r927
interest, by social equality, and, in many cases, by the closer bonds
of affection and blood relationship.
Interesting, even menacing, problems loom large for Hawaii in
the not distant future. Let but one of these be considered, namely,
the Japanese and citizenship. Granting that no Japanese immigrant
can ever become naturalized, nevertheless remains the irrefragable
law and fact that every male Japanese, Hawaii-born, by his birth
is automatically a citizen of the United States. Since practically
every other person in all Hawaii is Japanese, it is merely a matter
of time when the Hawaii-born Japanese vote will not only be larger
than any other Hawaiian vote, but will be practically equal to all
other votes combined. When such time comes, it looks as if the
Japanese will have the dominant say in local politics. If Hawaii
should get statehood, a Japanese governor of the State of Hawaii
would be not merely possible but very probable.
Charmian K. London, Our Hawati—Islands and Islanders (New York, Macmillan,
1922), 26-30.
— eo
37. Samoa (1921)
BY CAPTAIN WALDO EVANS
Captain Evans writes as Naval Governor of American Samoa.—Bibliography as
in No. 35 above.
N February 19, r900, an Executive order was signed by the
President, reading as follows:
The island of Tutuila, of the Samoan group, and all other islands of the group
east of longitude 171° west of Greenwich, are hereby placed under the control of
the Department of the Navy for a naval station.
The Secretary of the Navy shall take such steps as are necessary to establish
the authority of the United States and to give to the islands the necessary pro-
tection. .
Beginning with 1905, the commandant, upon nomination by the
Secretary of the Navy, has been given by the President of the United
States a commission as governor, and his authority in civil matters is
derived therefrom.
The islands have been known officially as “Naval Station, Tutuila,”
{|
|
No. 37] Samoa 147
but the Navy Department has now adopted the name “American
Samoa,” by which name they are now called. . . .
In 1903 full information as to the conditions in American Samoa was
furnished to Congress, but that body failed to legislate for the islands
and has never defined their political status. . . .
All of the Samoan Islands are of volcanic formation, having been
probably thrown up from the ocean bed by some mighty convulsion
of nature. All are mountainous.
The Island of Tutuila, of irregular shape, is about 18 miles long and
from 5 to 6 miles wide in the widest part. It is estimated that it con-
tains 40.2 square miles of land. A mountain ridge extends nearly the
whole length of the island, with spurs on each side, and with indenta-
tions of deep valleys. The aspect is extremely rugged, but more so in
the eastern than in the western part. There is very little level land
except at the foot of the mountains along the coast, and with the
exception of a broad fertile plain in the southwestern part of the
island. On this plain are several villages of importance and extensive
cultivations of coconut trees.
The north side is bold and precipitous, with a few level spaces here
and there, barely large enough to support a village. The mountains
are wooded to the top, the whole island being a mass of tropical vege-
tation, extremely beautiful to the eye of the traveler.
Pago Pago Bay, the safest and best harbor in the South Seas, has
its entrance to the southward and nearly cuts the island in twain.
It is formed in the crater of an immense volcano, the south side broken
away and open to the sea. About a mile from the harbor mouth it
turns sharply to the westward, giving the harbor the appearance of
the foot of a stocking, with the United States naval station situated
on the instep, facing north and entirely sheltered from seaward. The
sea can not be seen from ships at anchor inside the harbor, the ships
lying quietly in smooth water during the heaviest gales. High moun-
tains encompass the harbor, villages nestling comfortably on the nar-
row strip of level land along the shore. Pago Pago, the most important
village of the island, is at the extreme toe of the stocking, to follow
the simile. Fagatogo lies behind the naval station. Aua, Lepua, and
other small villages are on the north shore. The harbor is well buoyed
and lighted and may be safely entered by the largest vessels by night
Grdavin. 7s
148 Pacific Dependencies and Policies [r921
The climate is tropical. The southeast winds blow strongly from
May until November; during the other months of the year the winds
are variable, frequently from the west and northwest. Severe gales
and occasional hurricanes have been experienced. . . .
The seat of government is at the naval station in Pago Pago Bay.
The governor is at the head of the government. He is also the com-
mandant of the naval station and commands the station ship. The
secretary of native affairs, an executive official, has cognizance of all
native affairs and native officials, acting under the direction of the
governor. The position of chief customs officer is held by a naval
officer, so appointed by the governor. The public works officer of the
naval station acts in the same capacity in the island government, and
as such is superintendent of roads. The captain of the yard, or execu-
tive officer of the naval station, is sheriff and responsible for the public
safety. The island treasurer is a naval supply officer, who also acts
as the general store keeper of the naval station. The public health
officer is the senior medical officer, who, in addition to his naval
duties, has direct charge of the Samoan Hospital and outlying dis-
pensaries and is responsible for quarantine regulations and the sani-
tary conditions of the islands. The navy chaplain is superintendent
of education for the island government.
American Samoa is divided into three general administrative
divisions—Eastern District of Tutuila, Western District of Tutuila,
and Manua District—these corresponding to the Samoan political
divisions which have existed from early days. Each district is admin-
istered by a native district governor appointed by the governor. The
districts are divided into counties, each administered by a county
chief. These are also very ancient political divisions, each ruled by
one high chief. The county chiefs are appointed by the governor,
but the selection is limited, as the office is usually given to the chief
whose name entitles him to it by Samoan custom—an hereditary
position which is held during good behavior. District governors are
chosen from the rank of county chiefs. . . .
The soil is a rich mold upon the slopes and even upon the precipitous
mountain sides, while the valleys and level tracts are a deep alluvial
deposit of the same, the whole a decomposition of vegetable matter,
with only a slight proportion of decomposed lava. . . .
Lava beds descend to the sea in many places, with black and for-
No. 37] Samoa 149
bidding faces. The “iron-bound coast” extends for several miles east
of Leone Bay, the edge of a great lava bed, against which the sea roars
unceasingly. The sea has cut tunnels in the lava, breaking through
the crust many yards inland; the air compressed within the tunnels
or chambers by the surges of the sea forces the imprisoned water high
into the air through these inland “blowholes” with a geyserlike effect.
On a stormy day tise sight is a magnificent one.
The hills and valleys are rocky, but the volcanic rock is still dis-
integrating. Many landslides occur during the wet season from this
cause...
The most important product of the soil of Samoa is the coconut
(“niu”). This tree gives meat, drink, and shelter to the Samoans. It
grows anywhere it is planted—in the sand on the coast where the roots
are laved by the sea, on plateaus, on the slopes, and even on the moun-
tain ridges, where it stands out like a sentinel against the sky. .
From the husk of the coconut (coir) the men plait sennit, with which
they bind together the parts of canoes and all parts of the framework
of the houses without the use of nails. The shell is used for drinking
cups and for fuel. The leaves are used to make rough baskets, rough
mats, and to place on the thatches of the houses to hold them down
in windy weather, and when dry the leaves are used as torches. From
the midrib of the leaves crude brooms are made. The wood of the
trunk is too perishable to be of any great value, but it is used rough
hewn for rafters in the native houses, and whole sections of the trunk
are sometimes used for rustic bridges over streams. The water of the
green nuts is used for drink, and in some villages where there are no
springs it is their only beverage. It is slightly sweet, delicate, and
wholesome. .. .
The chief usefulness of the coconut is the copra produced from it.
Copra is the dried kernel of the ripe coconut. It is the principal—
in fact the only—export from American Samoa. It is shipped to for-
eign countries, where oil is expressed from it. This oil is in great de-
mand in the manufacture of coconut butters of various kinds, soaps,
salad oil, and for other purposes. . .
The Samoans are the true Polynesians; probably the finest physical
specimens of the race. In appearance they are of a light reddish-brown
or copper color, well formed, erect in bearing and handsome in fea-
tures. The face has many of the distinctive marks of the European.
150 Pacific Dependencies and Policies [1921
The nose is straight, the chin firm and strong, the cheek bones rather
prominent, and the forehead high. The hair is black and soft—some-
times wavy. There is nothing about them to suggest the Negro. The
men are tall, proud in bearing, muscular in limbs and torso, seldom
corpulent—withal, a very handsome race of men. The women, while
fit mothers for a race of strong men, are not often noticeably beautiful
in features. In girlhood and early womanhood they have beautiful
figures, but, like other natives of the Tropics, they do not retain a good
figure long. They are graceful, light-hearted, and merry; their eyes
are soft and dark, with an expression of gentleness and meekness.
The Samoan does not like to work. For this trait he has been
severely criticized, but the critics do not take into consideration his
life and environment. His wants are few; the climate demands that
little clothing be worn; nature is prodigal of her favors; and the heat
of the day is not conducive to exertion. It is customary for the
Samoans to rise at daylight, and do the hardest work of the day before
the sun is high. Their food is easily produced; breadfruit requires no
cultivation; bananas, taro, and yams require little beyond the planting;
pigs and chickens are raised to a considerable extent, but are generally
reserved for food at feasts, not for ordinary daily use. The men and
women fish on the reefs. There are certain fish which women catch,
and these are to be found under stones on the reef; the women also
collect clams and other shell fish. Men spear the fish from canoes, or
while standing on the reef, and they also use the hook and line in deep
water, by day and by night. This kind of labor the Samoan likes.
He will row or paddle in his boat for hours at a time with no fatigue,
but it is not easy to induce him to do a day’s work in the towns. There
are, however, notable exceptions to this rule, and when there is a proper
incentive the Samoan is capable of the hardest kind of work. There
is no desire to amass wealth. By the simple communistic system
under which the Samoans live, each person contributes the profits
of his industry to the family fund, and there is no incentive for one
person to work harder than his fellow laborer; the drone fares as well
in the good things of life as the worker. Energy and ambition must be
manifested in the head of the family in order to produce any increase
in prosperity... .
The people are generous and hospitable to a remarkable degree.
Any stranger is given a cordial welcome in any house, given food and
No. 37] Samoa 151
sleeping accommodations. There are so few foreigners in these islands
that this admirable trait has not been stamped out by imposition or
abuse of confidence. The child born out of wedlock labors under no
disadvantages, and an erring girl is soon forgiven by her family and
by the community. There is no polygamy.
The art of falsehood is extensively practiced, but open, barefaced
perjury in the courts is rare. In criminal trials the alibi is practically
unknown. Petty theft is common, but grand larceny, burglary, and
robbery seldom occur. . . .
The dress of the people consists of a “lavalava” or loin cloth, and
in the case of women of a waist or upper garment of some kind, some-
times of a long, loose gown. The men consider it undignified to appear
without a shirt or coat or both on occasions of ceremony, such as
attending church, visiting foreigners, or receiving distinguished guests,
but on ordinary occasions they wear no clothing, but the “lavalava.”
The women wear only the “lavalava” in their own homes or where
only Samoans may see them, but it is usually considered immodest
for them to expose the bust in the presence of foreigners, except when
unmarried girls take part in some Samoan ceremony such as dancing
the siva, the national dance. On ceremonial occasions the men and
women frequently wear their fine mats or tapas as clothing.
Tattooing, though prohibited in the Manua group, is universally
practiced in Tutuila. A young man is not supposed to meet other
men on equal terms until he has been tattooed. . . . The missionaries
at first attempted to abolish the practice, and laws were made against
it, but to no avail. The custom will doubtless disappear in the course
of time, as there is little to recommend it. The operation is painful,
and the young man is usually laid up for several weeks following the
tattooing, which, in itself, takes three or four days with intervals of
rest between. The women usually are not tattooed at all, but some of
them have numerous small designs tattooed on the legs and the back
of the hands.
American Samoa; A General Report by the Governor (Washington, Government
Printing Office, 1922), 10-25 passim.
CHAPTER VIII — LATIN-AMERICAN POLICIES
38. Monroe Doctrinings (1906)
BY WALLACE IRWIN
Wallace Irwin, journalist, editor, and author of many volumes in many veins,
has reduced to verse, largely humorous, a great deal of contemporary history and
politics. Another example is No. 50 below.
E have got our little foot in the Canal,
We have got the languid Cuban ’neath our eyes,
We have placed our index finger on the lazy San Dominger,
And we’re teaching Porto Rico to be wise.
We are asking Mister Castro won’t he please
Discontinue his piratical campaigns;
Yet the dark-skinned Latin Jingo only mutters, “Dirty Gringo!”
Which is all the thanks we’re getting for our pains.
Here’s a bumper to the doctrine of Monroe, roe, roe,
And the neighbors whom we cannot let alone;
Through the thirst for diagnosis we’re inserting our proboscis
Into everybody’s business but our own.
We are worrying from Texas to the Horn,
We are training guns on Germany’s advance,
While we shake the mail-clad mitten at the hunger of the Briton,
And suggest, “Monsieur, keep off the map!” to France.
Does the gentle South American rejoice
At our fatherly protection from the Powers?
No, alas! the dusky Jingo merely hisses, “ Yankee Gringo!”
To reward this large philanthropy of ours.
Here’s a bumper to the doctrine of Monroe, roe, roe,
Which we follow when we’ve nothing else to do,
While we spend our golden billions to protect the rag-tag millions,
And I think they’re making fun of us, don’t you?
Wallace Irwin, Random Rhymes and Odd Numbers (New York, Macmillan, 1906),
199-200.
152
No. 39} The Panama Canal 153
39. The Panama Canal (1909)
BY LIEUTENANT COLONEL GEORGE W. GOETHALS
Goethals was an Army officer who acted as Chairman and Chief Engineer of the
Isthmian Canal Commission, and first Civil Governor of the Canal Zone. Received
thanks of Congress (1915) for “distinguished service in constructing the Panama
Canal,” and (1918) was awarded the D. S. M. for especially meritorious and con-
spicuous service in reorganizing the Quartermaster’s Department during the World
War.—Bibliography: Howard C. Hill, Roosevelt and the Caribbean; M. W. Wil-
liams, Anglo-American Isthmian Diplomacy; P. Buneau-Varilla, Panama, the Crea-
tion, Destruction, and Resurrection; and Reports of Congressional Investigations in
Canal History (House Docs., 62d Congress, 2 Sess., No. 680, and Senate Docs., 63d
Congress, 2 Sess., No. 474).
HE United States, not unmindful of the advantages of an isth-
mian canal, had from time to time made investigations and
surveys of the various routes. With a view to government ownership
and control Congress directed an investigation of the Nicaraguan
Canal for which a concession had been granted to a private company.
The resulting report brought about such a discussion of the advantages
of the Panama route to the Nicaraguan route, that by an act of
Congress, approved March 3, 1889, a commission was appointed to
make full and complete investigation of the Isthmus of Panama, with a view to
the construction of a canal . . . to connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans .. .
and particularly to investigate the two routes known respectively as the Nicaragua
route and the Panama route, with a view to determining the most practicable and
feasible route for such canal, together with the approximate and probable cost of
constructing a canal at each of the two or more of said routes.
The commission reported on November 16, 1901, in favor of Pan-
ama, and recommended the lock type of canal. The plan consisted
of a sea-level section from Colon to Bohio, where a dam across the
Chagres Valley created a summit level 82 to go feet above the sea,
reached by two locks. The lake or summit level extended from Bohio
to Pedro Miguel, where two locks connected it with a pool 28 feet above
mean tide, extending to Miraflores, the location of the final lock. The
ruling bottom width of the canal prism was fixed at 150 feet, increased
at the curves and in the submerged channels. In Panama Bay the
width was fixed at 200 feet, and in the artificial channel in Limon
Bay 500 feet was adopted, with turning places 800 feet wide. The
754 Latin-American Policies [z909
minimum depth was 35 feet, and the locks were to have usable lengths
of 740 feet and widths of 84 feet. The commission assessed the value
of the rights, franchises, concessions, lands, unfinished work, plans,
and other property, including the railroad of the New Panama Canal
Company, at $40,000,000.
By an act of Congress, approved June 28, 1902, the President of
the United States was authorized to acquire, at a cost not exceeding
$40,000,000, the property rights of the New Panama Canal Company
on the Isthmus of Panama, and also to secure from the Republic of
Colombia perpetual control of a strip of land not less than 6 miles
wide, extending from the Caribbean Sea to the Pacific Ocean, and
the right . . . to excavate, construct, and to perpetually maintain, operate, and
protect thereon a canal of such depth, and capacity as will afford convenient pas-
sage of ships of the greatest tonnage and draft now in use.
In event the provisions for the purchase, and for securing the nec-
essary concession from Colombia could not be carried out, the Presi-
dent was authorized to secure the rights necessary for the construc-
tion of the Nicaraguan Canal.
To enable the President to carry out these provisions certain sums.
were appropriated and a bond issue, not to exceed one hundred and
thirty millions of dollars, was authorized. By this act Congress, in
accepting the estimates accompanying the report of the commission
of 1901, adopted the type proposed by the board, or a lock canal.
Pursuant to the legislation, negotiations were entered into with
Colombia and with the New Panama Canal Company, with the end
that a treaty was made with the Republic of Panama granting to the
United States control of a ro-mile strip, constituting the Canal Zone,
with the right to construct, maintain, and operate a canal. This
treaty was ratified by the Republic of Panama on December 2, 1903,
and by the United States on February 23, 1904.
The formal transfer of the property of the New Panama Canal
Company on the Isthmus was made on May 4, 1904, after which the
United States began the organization of a force for the construction
of the lock type of canal, in the meantime continuing the excavation
by utilizing the French material and equipment and such labor as was
procurable on the Isthmus. . .
On June 29, 1906, Congress provided that a lock type of canal be
constructed across the Isthmus of Panama, of the general type pro-
No. 39] The Panama Canal 155
posed by the minority of the Board of Consulting Engineers, and work
has continued along these lines. As originally proposed, the plan
consisted of a practically straight channel 500 feet wide, 41 feet deep
from deep water in the Caribbean to Gatun, where an ascent to the
85-foot level was made by three locks in flight. The level is maintained
by a dam approximately 7,700 feet long, one-half mile wide at the
base, 100 feet wide at the top, constructed to 135 feet above mean
tide. The lake formed by this dam, 171 square miles in extent,
carried navigation to Pedro Miguel, where a lock of 30-feet lift carried
the vessel down to a lake 55 feet above mean tide, extending to Sosa
Hill, where two locks overcame the difference of level between the lake
surface and the Pacific. Nineteen and eight-hundredths miles of the
distance from Gatun to Sosa Hill had a channel 1,000 feet at the
bottom, a minimum channel for 4% miles through Culebra of 200
feet at the bottom. The balance of the distance varied in width to 800
feet, the larger portion of the entire canal being not less than 500 feet.
The depth of water was fixed at 45 feet. The lake assured a perfect
control of the Chagres River.....
We are justly proud of the organization for the prosecution of the
work. The force originally organized by Mr. John F. Stevens for the
attack upon the continental divide has been modified and enlarged
as the necessities of the situation required, until at the present time it
approaches the perfection of a huge machine, and all are working
together to a common end. The manner in which the work is being
done and the spirit of enthusiasm that is manifested by all forcibly
strikes everyone who visits the works.
The main object of our being there is the construction of the canal;
everything else is subordinate to it, and the work of every department
is directed to the accomplishment of that object.
In addition to the department of construction and engineering, there
are the departments of sanitation and civil administration, the quarter-
master’s and subsistence departments, the purchasing department
organized in the United States, the legal department, and the de-
partments of examination of accounts and disbursements. Subor-
dinated to, but acting in conjunction with, the commission is the
Panama Railroad.
Too much credit cannot be given to the department of sanitation,
which, in conjunction with the division of municipal engineering, has
156 Latin-American Policies [r913
wrought such a change in the conditions as they existed in 1904 as to
make the construction of the canal possible. This department is
subdivided into the health department, which has charge of the
hospitals, supervision of health matters in Panama and Colon, and
of the quarantine, and into the sanitary inspection department,
which looks after the destruction of the mosquito by various methods,
by grass and brush cutting, the draining of various swampy areas,
and the oiling of unavoidable pools and stagnant streams.
According to the statistics of the health department, based on the
death rate, the Canal Zone is one of the heathiest communities in
the world, but in this connection it must be remembered that our
population consists of men and women in the prime of life, with
few if any of the aged, and that a number of the sick are returned to
the United States before death overtakes them.
George W. Goethals, The Isthmian Canal (Washington, Government Printing
Office, 1909), 3-21 passim.
40. Relations of the United States with Mexico (1913)
BY PRESIDENT WOODROW WILSON
This is one of the first official documents to give evidence of President Wilson’s
methods in diplomacy and international relations. In this negotiation he employed
a personal representative rather than the diplomatic service. Later, during the
World War, he relied for information and negotiation on his friend, Colonel House.
—For Wilson, see Nos. 129-132 below. For other matter by Wilson, see Nos. 168,
201, 204.—Bibliography: C. W. Barron, The Mexican Problem; S. G. Inman, In-
tervention in Mexico; Chester L. Jones. Mexico and Its Reconstruction; P. F. Martin,
Mexico in the Twentieth Century.
ENTLEMEN of the Congress, it is clearly my duty to lay before
you, very fully and without reservation, the facts concerning
our present relations with the Republic of Mexico. The deplorable
posture of affairs in Mexico I need not describe, but I deem it my
duty to speak very frankly of what this Government has done and
should seek to do in fulfillment of its obligation to Mexico herself,
as a friend and neighbor, and to American citizens whose lives and
vital interests are daily affected by the distressing conditions which
now obtain beyond our southern border.
No. 40] Relations of United States with Mexico 157
Those conditions touch us very nearly. Not merely because they
lie at our very doors. That of course makes us more vividly and more
constantly conscious of them, and every instinct of neighborly inter-
est and sympathy is aroused and quickened by them; but that is only
one element in the determination of our duty. We are glad to call
ourselves the friends of Mexico, and we shall, I hope, have many an
occasion, in happier times as well as in these days of trouble and con-
fusion, to show that our friendship is genuine and disinterested, capa-
ble of sacrifice and every generous manifestation. The peace, pros-
perity, and contentment of Mexico mean more, much more, to us than
merely an enlarged field for our commerce and enterprise. They mean
an enlargement of the field of self-government and the realization of
the hopes and rights of a nation with whose best aspirations, so long
suppressed and disappointed, we deeply sympathize. We shall yet
prove to the Mexican people that we know how to serve them without
first thinking how we shall serve ourselves. . .
. . . The future has much in store for Mexico, as for all the States
of Central America; but the best gifts can come to her only if she be
ready and free to receive them and to enjoy them honorably. America
in particular—America north and south and upon both continents—
waits upon the development of Mexico; and that development can be
sound and lasting only if it be the product of a genuine freedom, a
just and ordered government founded upon law. Only so can it be
peaceful or fruitful of the benefits of peace. Mexico has a great and
enviable future before her, if only she choose and attain the paths of
honest constitutional government.
The present circumstances of the Republic, I deeply regret to say,
do not seem to promise even the foundations of such a peace. We have
waited many months, months full of peril and anxiety, for the condi-
tions there to improve, and they have not improved. They have
grown worse, rather. The territory in some sort controlled by the
provisional authorities at Mexico City has grown smaller, not larger.
The prospect of the pacification of the country, even by arms, has
seemed to grow more and more remote; and its pacification by the
authorities at the capital is evidently impossible by any other means
than by force. Difficulties more and more entangle those who claim
to constitute the legitimate government of the Republic. They have
not made good their claim in fact. Their successes in the field have
158 Latin-American Policies [1913
proved only temporary. War and disorder, devastation and confusion,
seem to threaten to become the settled fortune of the distracted
country. As friends we could wait no longer for a solution which
every week seemed further away. It was our duty at least to volunteer
our good offices—to offer to assist, if we might, in effecting some ar-
rangements which would bring relief and peace and set up a universally
acknowledged political authority there.
Accordingly, I took the liberty of sending the Hon. John Lind,
formerly governor of Minnesota, as my personal spokesman and rep-
resentative, to the City of Mexico, with the following instructions:
Press very earnestly upon the attention of those who are now exercising authority
or wielding influence in Mexico the following considerations and advice:
The Government of the United States does not feel at liberty any longer to
stand inactively by while it becomes daily more and more evident that no real
progress is being made toward the establishment of a government at the City of
Mexico which the country will obey and respect.
The Government of the United States does not stand in the same case with the
other great Governments of the world in respect of what is happening or what is
likely to happen in Mexico. We offer our good offices, not only because of our
genuine desire to play the part of a friend, but also because we are expected by the
powers of the world to act as Mexico’s nearest friend.
We wish to act in these circumstances in the spirit of the most earnest and dis-
interested friendship. It is our purpose in whatever we do or propose in this per-
plexing and distressing situation not only to pay the most scrupulous regard to the
sovereignty and independence of Mexico—that we take as a matter of course to
which we are bound by every obligation of right and honor—but also to give every
possible evidence that we act in the interest of Mexico alone, and not in the in-
terest of any person or body of persons who may have personal or property claims in
Mexico which they may feel that they have the right to press. We are seeking to
counsel Mexico for her own good and in the interest of her own peace, and not for
any other purpose whatever. The Government of the United States would deem
itself discredited if it had any selfish or ulterior purpose in transactions where the
peace, happiness, and prosperity of a whole people are involved. It is acting as
its friendship for Mexico, not as any selfish interest, dictates.
The present situation in Mexico is incompatible with the fulfillment of inter-
national obligations on the part of Mexico, with the civilized development of
Mexico herself, and with the maintenance of tolerable political and economic
conditions in Central America. It is upon no common occasion, therefore, that
the United States offers her counsel and assistance. All America cries out for a
settlement.
A satisfactory settlement seems to us to be conditioned on—
(a) An immediate cessation of fighting throughout Mexico, a definite armistice
solemnly entered into and scrupulously observed.
No. 40] Relations of United States with Mexico 150
(b) Security given for an early and free election in which all will agree to take
part.
(c) The consent of Gen. Huerta to bind himself not to be a candidate for election
as President of the Republic at this election.
(d) The agreement of all parties to abide by the results of the election and co-
operate in the most loyal way in organizing and supporting the new administration.
The Government of the United States will be glad to play any part in this settle-
ment or in its carrying out which it can play honorably and consistently with inter-
national right. It pledges itself to recognize and in every way possible and proper
to assist the administration chosen and set up in Mexico in the way and on the
conditions suggested.
Taking all the existing conditions into consideration, the Government of the
United States can conceive of no reasons sufficient to justify those who are now
attempting to shape the policy or exercise the authority of Mexico in declining the
offices of friendship thus offered. Can Mexico give the civilized world a satisfac-
tory reason for rejecting our good offices? If Mexico can suggest any better way
in which to show our friendship, serve the people of Mexico, and meet our inter-
national obligations, we are more than willing to consider the suggestion.
Mr. Lind executed his delicate and difficult mission with singular
tact, firmness, and good judgment, and made clear to the authorities
at the City of Mexico not only the purpose of his visit but also the
spirit in which it had been undertaken. But the proposals he sub-
mitted were rejected, in a note the full text of which I take the liberty
of laying before you.
I am led to believe that they were rejected partly because the
authorities at Mexico City had been grossly misinformed and misled
upon two points. They did not realize the spirit of the American
people in this matter, their earnest friendliness and yet sober deter-
mination that some just solution be found for the Mexican difficulties;
and they did not believe that the present administration spoke,
through Mr. Lind, for the people of the United States. The effect
of this unfortunate misunderstanding on their part is to leave them
singularly isolated and without friends who can effectively aid them.
So long as the misunderstanding continues we can only await the
time of their awakening to a realization of the actual facts. We can
not thrust our good office upon them. The situation must be given
a little more time to work itself out in the new circumstances; and
I believe that only a little while will be necessary. For the circum-
stances are new. The rejection of our friendship makes them new
and will inevitably bring its own alterations in the whole aspect of
160 Latin-American Policies [r913
affairs. The actual situation of the authorities at Mexico City will
presently be revealed.
Meanwhile, what is it our duty to do? Clearly, everything that
we do must be rooted in patience and done with calm and disinterested
deliberation. Impatience on our part would be childish, and would
be fraught with every risk of wrong and folly. We can afford to
exercise the self-restraint of a really great nation which realizes its
own strength and scorns to misuse it... .
While we wait the contest of the rival forces will undoubtedly for
a little while be sharper than ever, just because it will be plain that an
end must be made of the existing situation, and that very promptly;
and with the increased activity of the contending factions will come,
it is to be feared, increased danger to the non-combatants in Mexico
as well as to those actually in the field of battle. The position of
outsiders is always particularly trying and full of hazard where there
is civil strife and a whole country is upset. We should earnestly
urge all Americans to leave Mexico at once, and should assist them
to get away in every way possible—not because we would mean to
slacken in the least our efforts to safeguard their lives and their
interests, but because it is imperative that they should take no
unnecessary risks when it is physically possible for them to leave
the country. We should let every one who assumes to exercise
authority in any part of Mexico know in the most unequivocal way
that we shall vigilantly watch the fortunes of those Americans who
can not get away, and shall hold those responsible for their sufferings
and losses to a definite reckoning. That can be and will be made
plain beyond the possibility of a misunderstanding.
For the rest, I deem it my duty to exercise the authority conferred
upon me by the law of March 14, 1912, to see to it that neither side
to the struggle now going on in Mexico receive any assistance from
this side the border. I shall follow the best practice of nations in the
matter of neutrality by forbidding the exportation of arms or muni-
tions of war of any kind from the United States to any part of the
Republic of Mexico—a policy suggested by several interesting prece-
dents and certainly dictated by many manifest considerations of
practical expediency. We can not in the circumstances be the par-
tisans of either party to the contest that now distracts Mexico or
constitute ourselves the virtual umpire between them. .. .
No. 41] Latin View of the Monroe Doctrine 161
. . . The steady pressure of moral force will before many days
break the barriers of pride and prejudice down, and we shall triumph
as Mexico’s friends sooner than we could triumph as her enemies—
and how much more handsomely, with how much higher and finer
satisfactions of conscience and of honor!
Address to Congress, August 27, 1913, in Congressional Record, L, 3803.
41. The Latin View of the Monroe Doctrine (1914)
BY LEOPOLD GRAHAME
Grahame is the author of Argentine Railways (1916).—Bibliography: Alejandro
Alvarez, The Monroe Doctrine; Albert Bushnell Hart, The Monroe Doctrine. See
H. Sherill, Modernizing the Monroe Doctrine.
LTHOUGH there are many conflicting opinions as to the ram-
ifications of the Monroe Doctrine, it seems to me that the
Latin view is that which must ultimately prevail in defining its
status. The issue is clean-cut. It is whether the Monroe Doctrine is
to be unilateral, or continental, in its operation; and upon this issue
the retention of the doctrine as an integral part of the national policy
of the United States must alone be determined... .
It has been urged by many eminent public men, including ex-
President Roosevelt, that the very conditions which led to the adop-
tion of the Monroe Doctrine conferred upon the United States not
only by implication, but by necessity, the right to extend its protec-
tion of the Latin republics to the point of active intervention when
the existence of disturbing conditions in any one of them might be
thought to jeopardize its national independence. It should be re-
membered, however, that the United States has never assumed
responsibility for the acts of those countries, but has, on the contrary,
always maintained that, whilst it would not sanction the acquisition
or occupation of the territory of an American republic by a foreign
power, it would assist such power to protect its subjects from moral
or material injury in cases of national wrong-doing; and to that extent
the doctrine, though not incorporated into international law, has
been accepted without reserve by practically all of the European
governments. Nor, indeed, are there to be found, so far as I am aware,
162 Latin-American Policies [1914
any historical records to sustain the contention that the Monroe
Doctrine is anything more than a logical culmination of an order of
political ideas initiated by the declaration of American independence
to separate the interests of the two hemispheres and to prevent
European intervention in the internal affairs of the countries on this
side of the Atlantic.
Let me ask in what cases the relations of a Latin republic with a
European government might call for the reassertion of the Monroe
Doctrine by the United States? The answer, I think, would be civil
wars and insurrections; outrages inflicted upon foreigners; failure to
fulfil contracts with them; their unlawful expulsion; and default in
payment of public or private debts. These, in the abstract, would
constitute the most likely reasons for a possible future application of
the Monroe Doctrine; and within the last ten years we have had
practical demonstration of the willingness of the great powers of
Europe to accept the American view and to submit the differences
arising out of such matters to the judicial methods of international
courts of arbitration. Thus, the Monroe Doctrine, in its original and
real sense, is universally established and admitted; and I cannot
conceive either the moral or legal grounds upon which the United
States can lay claim, in regard to the Latin republics, to a right so
admittedly and so strongly denied to the nations of Europe.
We know from the fully recorded proceedings of the negotiations
between President Monroe and the British government, preceding the
formal declaration of the doctrine, that Mr. Canning, whilst adhering
to its principles, steadfastly refused to allow the British government
to become an official party to its formal establishment. The Amer-
ican minister, Mr. Rush, repeatedly informed his government of his
belief that Great Britain had suspicions that the United States
entertained designs of securing commercial advantages and of creat-
ing a hegemony on the American continent. Is it, then, surprising
that, with latter-day occurrences in mind, the Latin-American re-
publics should also entertain suspicions as to the motives underlying
the various and frequently strained interpretations placed upon the
Monroe Doctrine by many leaders of American thought?
It must be borne in mind that although successive Presidents of
the United States, in recent years, have often stated, with undoubted
sincerity, that this country has no idea of obtaining an inch of Latin-
No. 41] Latin View of the Monroe Doctrine 163
American territory by conquest, circumstances have arisen to justify
the belief in many of the smaller republics of this continent that
their complete independence is not quite so secure as they would
wish. Common sense points to the conclusion that if, rightly or
wrongly, the British government harbored doubts in the matter of
American policy, in the early twenties of the nineteenth century,
even in the face of the solemn declarations of such men as Monroe,
Clay, Adams, Madison, Jefferson, Rush, Gallatin, and other equally
conscientious and patriotic citizens, it can hardly be a matter of
surprise that the Latin-American sense of security has been weakened
by what has transpired in the recent past in the policy of the United
States towards the sister republics. I do not for one moment assume
or believe, that enlightened public opinion in this country, official
or unofficial, regards either as desirable, or justifiable, encroachments
upon the sovereign rights of the Latin-American nations. On the
contrary, I assume and believe that the main purpose of the policy
of the United States in relation to the other republics is to maintain
and perpetuate their absolute independence. ‘Therefore, I would
further ask, what advantages are to be secured by the extension of
the scope of the Monroe Doctrine beyond that so specifically expressed
by its original founders?
The people of Latin America are of common origin. Their eman-
cipation was secured by arduous struggles with their former oppres-
sors; and an attack upon the dearly-bought independence of
any one of the republics is reflected throughout them all. Their
view of the Monroe Doctrine is that, although it has its origin in the
United States, it is part of the international law of the American
continent, where each nation is a distinct unit, with equal freedom
and sovereignty and with no prerogative extended to any single one
of them to control a continental policy. They regard the Monroe
Doctrine as an instrument designed to proclaim the existence, in the
western hemisphere, of independent nations, with the right to implant
laws and institutions for the government of free people, without
interference or dictation at the hands of the monarchies of Europe;
but those republics would consider their last condition as worse than
their first, if a distorted interpretation of the doctrine were to lead to
any of them becoming, what, for all practical purposes, would be
vassals of the United States... .
164 Latin-American Policies [1914
. . . The doubts and suspicions of the Latin republics as to the
ultimate aims of the United States are accentuated by the widening
of the Monroe Doctrine to ends never contemplated by its authors.
It is such incidents as those which have occurred in Mexico, in Nicar-
agua and in Colombia, that have led to a growing belief in the
supposed desire on the part of the United States to establish a suzer-
ainty over some of the republics of Central and South America; and,
even though there be no payment of a money tribute, or no open
claim to the right of intervention in the internal affairs of the other
states, the repetition of such acts as are here indicated, would, to
all intents and purposes, confer the power of suzerainty upon the
United States. . .
Ex-President Roosevelt truly describes the situation when he says
that the Monroe Doctrine is looked upon with favor and is even
welcomed as an American policy by the leading statesmen of South
America; but what they approve and welcome is the Monroe Doctrine
as they view it; and not as it is viewed by a great number of the
public men of the United States. The Argentine Republic has special
reasons for gratitude for the past existence of the Monroe Doctine,
not least amongst which are, that it was the first of the Latin-American
republics to be recognized by the United States; and that it was
enabled, largely through the re-assertion of that doctrine, to remain
over a long period in undisturbed possession of the extensive and then
undeveloped Patagonian territory, which is now becoming such a
valuable national asset. Yet, knowing as I do, the honorable and
liberty-loving character of the Argentine people, I venture to assert
that there is not a public man of that country who would sanction,
for one moment, the further endorsement of the Monroe Doctrine, if
he believed it implied a claim to intervention in the domestic concerns
of even the least important of the American republics. . . .
Looking at all these circumstances and at the change of conditions
in all the American republics from those existing in their early stages
of nationhood, there would appear to be little reason and less justifica-
tion for the assumption, by the United States, of anything in the
nature of protectorate over them. This country has the right to
adopt measures to secure the fullest protection of its citizens and
their interests on the borders of a turbulent neighbor, such as every
nation enjoys in other parts of the world; but it derives no prescriptive
No. 42] The Modern Monroe Doctrine 165
right from the Monroe Doctrine to encroach upon the independence
of any other sovereign state.
Briefly summarized, the situation, as already stated, must be
viewed alike from the standpoints of justice and expediency. Justice
unquestionably demands the complete independence of all the repub-
lics of the New World. To deny this is to stultify the utterances of
every President of the United States since the declaration of its
independence. On the other hand, expediency dictates that “honesty
is the best policy;” and that moral as well as material loss must
necessarily follow the pursuance of a course of action which would
alienate the sympathies and friendship of the twenty independent
nations described as the Latin Republics of America. In cther words,
it would involve the sacrifice of commercial and industrial expansion
to political considerations that would bring no corresponding advan-
tages. The really sane view of the Monroe Doctrine is that its pro-
visions should be enforced only against those who seek to violate
them and not against those in whose interest they were framed.
Leopold Grahame, in Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social
Science (Philadelphia, July, 1914), LIV, 57-62 passim.
42. The Modern Monroe Doctrine (1920)
BY CHARLES C. THACH
Thach is Associate in History and Political Science at John Hopkins University.
He is the author of The Creation of the Presidency, 1775-1789 (Johns Hopkins
Studies in History and Political Science, Series XI, no. 4).—Bibliography as in No.
41 above.
ete UCH was the Monroe Doctrine, a statement of the right
of the Latin-American peoples to work out their own salva-
tion free from outside interference, and of the interest that the United
States had in the preservation of this right from European inter-
ference. For some seventy-five years it stood the wear and tear of
actual operation remarkably well. Polk, to be sure, added a new
provision, and one which was scarcely a logical deduction from the
original principle, namely, that a Latin-American State could not
even voluntarily alienate territory to a European Power. The annexa-
166 Latin-American Policies [1920
tion of Texas, despite claims to the contrary, was no violation either
of the letter or the spirit of the doctrine, which, indeed, had contem-
plated just such a voluntary accession to the Union, not only of
Texas, but also of Cuba. Even the forcible annexation of California
and New Mexico was not so black as it has been painted, for Mexico
did her fair share in making the war inevitable and the territory in
question was practically masterless long before it began.
The growth of American interest in a trans-isthmian canal, however,
led to the enunciation of a doctrine which was certainly not in accord
with the original principle that Latin-America could do with its own
as seemed best to itself. This doctrine, the so-called doctrine of
“paramount interest,” was to the effect that the United States claimed
the exclusive right to protect and guarantee any canal built across
Central America. This, obviously, was a clear denial of the right
of the States possessing canal routes to enter into what agreements
they chose concerning their territory. But, in any event, the new
doctrine scarcely came to any practical importance during the period
prior to 1898.
On the other hand, the two chief applications of it in those years
were in complete accord with the spirit of the original message. When
Seward finally brought about the downfall of the Maximilian govern-
ment in Mexico during the sixties by forcing Napoleon III to withdraw
his troops he was undoubtedly protecting the Mexicans from a rule
which had been forced on them by a European Power and was main-
tained only by its troops. Similarly, when Grover Cleveland forced
Great Britain to arbitrate her dispute with Venezuela, he was, he
thought, preventing a European Power from acquiring, by virtue of
her superior might, the territory of a defenceless neighbor.
But Cleveland was the last of the old order. McKinley, Roosevelt,
Taft, Knox, Wilson, Hughes, differing toto celo from each other in other
respects, have been as one in transforming the Monroe Doctrine from
one of national independence and non-intervention into one of Amer-
ican suzerainty and intervention. It has been a singularly hypocrit-
ical and unedifying performance. All have given lip service to the
doctrine, have proclaimed it the ark of the covenant of our foreign
policy. All have heaped Latin-America with fine phrases about
independence, equality and sovereignty. And all have busied them-
selves in denying, so far as their acts went, all three, until finally
No. 42] The Modern Monroe Doctrine 167
the nation today stands committed to a policy which seeks to de-
termine the very form and personnel of the Latin-American govern-
ments, and which denies that right of revolution which, as it happens,
is the basic principle of the very doctrine which we have always pro-
fessed to revere and apply.
It began with the Spanish War. Our purpose, we declared at the
outset, was not to “exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction or control”
over Cuba, but “to leave the government and control of the island
to its people.” But, with the war over, we established a protectorate,
despite Cuba’s opposition. We annexed Porto Rico, whose right to
determine her own affairs amounted to nothing in the face of the
desire of the United States to keep her. The basic assumption of the
original doctrine, that the Latin-Americans had both the right and
the capacity to work out their own future, went overboard once and
forever.
If Mr. Roosevelt did not intervene in the Panama “revolution”
then intervention has lost all meaning. A rebellion of a portion of
Colombia, if not actively fomentea by American agents, was cer-
tainly assured of success by American troops, American recognition,
and a guarantee treaty. Santo Domingo came next, and with it a
“modification,” and “extension” of the Monroe Doctrine that com-
pletely reversed its original significance. This modification took the
form of the “doctrine of preventive intervention,” by virtue of which
the United States has claimed and exercised the right to intervene
in the affairs of any Latin-American State whenever, in its opinion, a
state of affairs threatens to arise which may produce European in-
tervention, which, in turn, may produce occupation of territory,
which may ultimately produce annexation. If this is a doctrine of
non-intervention, of national independence, then, of course, black is
white.
Followed Mr. Taft and Mr. Knox. The region of Central America
was their especial preserve. “The United States,” said Mr. Taft,
“has been glad to encourage and support American bankers who
were willing to lend a helping hand to the financial rehabilitation of
such countries, because the financial rehabilitation and the protec-
tion of their customs-houses trom being the prey of would-be dictators
would remove at one stroke the menace of foreign creditors and the
menace of revolutionary disorder.” American bankers, those notori-
168 Latin-American Policies [1920
ous extenders of the helping hand, were no longer, it would seem,
“foreign” to Central America. And the “sacred right of revolution”
had become mere “revolutionary disorder.”
Nor did the great crusade for the rights of small nations produce a
change so far as the small nations of America were concerned. The
Great Crusader himself informed the Pan-American Scientific Con-
gress that the Monroe Doctrine had set up a partial protectorate
over Latin-America and that it contained no pledge concerning the
method in which we would exercise the powers that flowed from it.
Nicaragua was bribed into a treaty that made her, to considerable
degree, our ward, thus partially consummating an abortive plan
fathered by Mr. Taft, which looked toward the creation of a complete
protectorate. Santo Domingo and Haiti found that their world
was much safer for deserving Democrats than for democracy, which,
for purposes relating to this hemisphere, was interpreted to be synony-
mous with government by the marines. Mexico, too, discovered that
her government had, for the future, to conform to the ideals of gov-
ernmental morality entertained by the administration then in power
in the United States. Huerta, not so conforming, got no recognition,
and hence no credit and no arms. Without these, his existence was,
of course, impossible and power passed from him to successors who
had our approval.
And what of the Hon. Charles Evans Hughes? As might have been
expected from so distinguished a former ornament of the Supreme
Bench, he jettisoned morality and took legality aboard. No Latin-
American government, the edict went forth, would be recognized
if it was of revolutionary origin, or if its ideas concerning private
property and the right of the State in relation thereto did not con-
form with those of the United States. More than that, revolutionists
could get no arms here, but established governments might. Legiti-
macy, as a hundred years ago, became the order of the day.
Charles C. Thach, The Monroe Doctrine, in American Mercury, February, 1925
‘New York), IV, 140-142.
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No. 43] American Codperation in Porto Rico 166
43. American Coöperation in Porto Rico (1925)
BY KNOWLTON MIXER
Mixer is a lawyer practising in New York.—Bibliography as in No. 35 above;
also L. S. Rowe, The United States and Porto Rico.
HEN the invading forces of the United States landed in
Porto Rico our officers found a people suffering from the
results of the oppression of centuries. Ninety per cent. of the popu-
lation were unable to read or write in any language and were more
densely ignorant than those of any South American country. The
people had had no experience whatever in self-government. Initia-
tive had been proscribed; they had learned simply to do as they
were ordered by their superiors and to accept whatever was given
them in return. They suffered from social conditions which were the
result of ignorance and the neglect of their government. The origi-
nally fertile lands of the Island were impoverished by a century of
cultivation without refreshment and commerce languished, epidemics
were common with this people, underfed and overcrowded, chroni-
cally the victims of hookworm, malaria and tuberculosis.
In the twenty-five years of American rule the population has
increased fifty per cent. The birth rate has advanced and the death
rate has been reduced so that the net increase of population per year
is now approximately 22,000. Epidemics have been abolished and
measurable progress has been made in the fight against hookworm,
malaria and tuberculosis.
Under tne old régime practically no public school system existed.
Nine-tenths of the people were rural and there were no rural schools.
There are now more than 2,000 rural schools while above 200,000
purils are enrolled in graded, high schools and technical schools
throughout the Island. For education the Insular Government is
expending annually $4,000,000, more than a third of its budget.
Illiteracy has been reduced in the average to fifty-five per cent.
of the population but in the cities it has been reduced to thirty-seven
per cent. The rural school is becoming a real factor for progress in
the country. The growing system of farm and technical schools for
boys and the teaching of domestic science for girls are training the
170 Latin-American Policies [1925
present generation to take care of itself and are both raising the
standard of living and pointing the way to attain it.
A complete University with six departments and an enrollment
of more than 2,000 students has been established and maintained.
During the American period ten million dollars have been spent
on roads, an investment which has increased the value of the lands
opened to commerce many times the sum expended. To make these
lands of the interior available to commerce this construction of roads
has been a prime necessity for the Island’s development. . .
A large expenditure, also constructive in character, has been made
for irrigation, which has increased the productivity of the ands
affected at least fifty per cent. . .
The manifold expenditures for the public good have been accom-
plished without undue taxation, in fact the resulting taxes are very
much less than those of the United States... .
Even in the coffee trade which has advanced the least of the basic
industries, because of its lack of protection under the U. S. tariff,
the production is again as large as during the Spanish régime and
the price is approaching the pre-Spanish war figure. It is at least
bringing as high a price in the American market as the best South
American coffees. .
The production of sugar has not only made extraordinary advances
in volume but has achieved a high standard in method, which places
Porto Rico in the front rank of producing countries. The har-
monious codperation between government officials and the Centrale
managers in the work of improvement may be credited with the
present satisfactory situation.
The tobacco trade has witnessed an enormous improvement in
organization and quality of product and this has brought a correspond-
ing increase in price. The large increase in export is in leaf tobacco
which last year reached more than 23,000,000 lbs. This is not an
entirely satisfactory phase of growth for the Island, since if this
large volume of leaf had been manufactured into cigars in the Island,
employment would have been furnished a larger number of tobacco
workers. It is possible that this outcome is the result of strikes which
have been frequent and prolonged.
Fruit is entirely an American industry in inception and develop-
ment. Its importance as an economic factor grows yearly and the
No. 43] American Codperation in Porto Rico 171
industry seems, at present, to be on a thoroughly satisfactory basis,
particularly as to the production of grape fruit and pineapples.
It would be surprising if this universal improvement of business
conditions should not bring with it some measure of betterment for
the worker whose labor makes such results possible. His advance
in wages and rise in living standards would doubtless follow in direct
ratio if it were not for the fact that his labor is constantly in surplus,
his supply always greater than the demand.
That his condition is improving, however, is shown by the Gover-
nor’s report for 1924 in which he says that a marked improvement
in the conditions of labor has been shown during the year. Wages
have increased, living conditions have improved, unemployment has
decreased. The activities of government in welfare work, education
of the children, prevention and treatment of disease and sanitary
measures of all kinds have been greatly extended and the chief bene-
ficiaries of all these are the workmen.
The attitude of the present administration is that the condition
of the working man is the responsibility of the Government and
that every effort possible, within the field of government operations,
must be made to raise the standard of his living to an approximation
of that on the mainland. This point of view, if adhered to, will
inevitably result in a marked improvement within a few years. .
The labor legislation enacted during the American régime manifests
a sincere desire to overcome so far as government can, the handicaps
of labor due to ignorance and past neglect. These laws aided by the
spread of education are beginning to make themselves felt in a higher
standard of living and morals.
In summing up the results of American control for a quarter of a
century in his inaugural address, the present Governor touched on
the underlying explanation of this unexampled progress. He said:
“T doubt if anywhere, any isolated section, a part of any other nation,
can show a like record. It proves, does it not, that our relations are
mutually beneficial?
“We have, on the part of the general government, granted the
greatest possible measure of liberty. You have privileges in some
regards of greater worth than those enjoyed by any other part of the
Union. You have a constantly increasing measure of local self-gov-
ernment and you have given to the world a splendid example of what
172 Latin-American Policies [1925
may be done in less than a single generation by a liberty-loving,
capable and intelligent people under republican institutions.”
The reasons for this progress, though largely native to our fun-
damental reactions as a nation, are worth analyzing, since wherever
they may be applied with the same sincerity of purpose, similar results
may confidently be expected.
The results were made possible then by the active participation in
Island affairs of the United States government, first exemplified undee
the military government by the establishment of the fundamentals
of liberty, the freedom of speech and the press and education, the
protection of property, the abolishment of extreme punishment for
crimes and the reformation of the judiciary.
The early grant of civil government provided a school for citizenship
of the most effective sort. This was supplemented by frequent
hearings before the Insular Affairs Committees of the House and
Senate to whose members, Porto Ricans, representing all parties,
have had an opportunity to express their criticism and their desires.
To the insistent demand for citizenship from Porto Rico, Congress
finally yielded and granted not only that badge of equality but a
measure of almost complete autonomy in the Jones law. . . .
With a very few exceptions the United States has sent men of the
best type to represent the nation in its coöperation with the Island
representatives. The Island leaders have at times complained that
they were made subject to men who knew nothing of their language
nor history and were not in sympathy with their traditions. There
has, however, been but one short period in recent years when that
criticism could be justly applied. With this exception the largest
measure of sympathy with the Island needs and coöperation in its
advancement have been manifested by those who have been sent
from the United States... .
Protection and stability have been given the Island through the
Public Health Service and military control and as a consequence of
this high financial credit has been established which enables the
Island treasury to borrow at low rates of interest. This high credit
enables the Government to complete public work of great productive
value to the country at a low cost and at the same time makes it
possible to employ thousands of laborers at remunerative wages.
In general the Government has been sustained by the loyalty and
No. 43] American Codperation in Porto Rico 173
coöperation of the Porto Ricans. This friendly and codperative
spirit was particularly marked in the early years of civil government
when the best of local talent was devoted to the joint effort of building
up the country. ...
The keen desire manifested by the people for education and their
grateful acceptance and coöperation with the various plans for their
betterment, when they have understood them, have been important
factors in the Island’s progress. . . .
In spite of the extraordinary progress made in the past twenty-five
years, the underlying problem of the Island is not yet solved, since
the regeneration of the farm laborer has but just begun. That a
start has been made is a great step in advance. Particularly is it a
hopeful sign that all political parties have accepted this problem as
their responsibility and that one party, whose power is expanding
rapidly, that is, the Socialist, has made the welfare of the working
man its sole objective. In short, the outlook of the rural farm laborer
has never in his history been as bright as it is today. He has a long
way to go before he can reach the standard of his brothers on the
continent but he is on the way. He is at least a citizen of the United
States and this, in the opinion of Mr. Travieso, the first native secre-
tary of the Island and the mayor of San Juan, is the greatest achieve-
ment of the Porto Rican during the past twenty-five years. His
immediate response to the grant of citizenship in 1917 was his registra-
tion for the national army to the number of 121,000 men. His loyalty
at that moment of the nation’s need was beyond question and many
times the actual number enlisted would gladly have volunteered for
service overseas if places could have been found for them.
Knowlton Mixer, Porto Rico (New York, Macmillan, 1926), 273-285 passim.
174 Latin-American Policies [1927
44. Uncle Sam, Imperialist (1927)
BY PROFESSOR WILLIAM R. SHEPHERD
Shepherd is Seth Low Professor of History at Columbia University. He was
United States delegate to the first Pan-American Scientific Congress at Santiago,
Chile, in 1908-1909, and secretary of the United States delegation at the fourth
International Conference of American States at Buenos Aires in 1910. He has also
been otherwise specially concerned with international affairs within the Americas,
and has published a number of books concerning the Hispanic nations of the New
World and the relations of the United States therewith—Bibliography as in No.
41 above.
N about thirty years we have created two new republics—Cuba
and Panama; converted both of them and three other Latin-Ameri-
can countries—the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and Haiti—into
virtual protectorates; intervened by force at least thirty times in the
internal affairs of nine supposedly sovereign and independent nations;
made the period of intervention last anywhere from a few days to a
dozen years; enlarged our investments from a paltry two or three hun-
dred millions of dollars to the tidy sum of upwards of three billions, and
installed in four states our own collectors of customs to insure payment.
Incidentally, we have annexed Porto Rico and the Virgin Islands,
built a canal, secured an option to construct another and gathered
in several naval stations.
The causes for our entry into so close a relationship with the five
little republics may easily be recalled. In 1898 the United States
declared war on Spain for the liberation of Cuba from what we re-
garded as Spanish misrule. The immediate motive, beyond doubt,
was one of good will toward a people suffering from oppression in an
island that lay very near our own shores.
Meanwhile Americans had long been cherishing the idea of con-
structing a canal somewhere in the nether portion of the North Amer-
ican Continent. Whether it should be run through the Colombian
province of Panama or through the Republic of Nicaragua was the
question until 1903, when a timely revolution in the province solved
the difficulty in favor of the Panama route. Thereafter it became a
foregone conclusion that the second new nation which we had god-
fathered within five years would grant to the United States all the
rights and privileges which the building and control of a canal might
warrant.
No. 44] Uncle Sam, Imperialist 175
Hardly had the construction of the new waterway begun, when the
financial distress of another small state, the Dominican Republic,
awoke fears on the part of the American government lest the situation
prompt European creditors to take measures for a collection of their
debts, likely to impinge upon some one of our numerous interpreta-
tions of the Monroe Doctrine. Hence, in order to forestall that possi-
bility, in 1905 the United States assumed financial guardianship itself.
From the Dominican Republic the next step was directed, in 1912,
to Nicaragua. Here two motives came into operation. One was the
determination of the United States not to allow an option to be ac-
quired by some foreign power for the construction of a canal that
would not only compete with the Panama waterway, but would also
be a potential menace to our control of the latter. The other motive
was, to quiet political disturbances that threatened injury to Ameri-
cans and foreigners and their respective property. The fact that the
gentleman who in 1927 claims to be president of Nicaragua happens
to be the same aspirant whom we installed in office fifteen years ago
tends enchantment to the present tangle there.
In 1915 the Colossus of the North again stepped back on to the
island for the eastern end of which he had already assumed the financial
management. At the western end lay a Negro republic called Haiti,
squirming under a series of despotic presidencies tempered by fre-
quent assassination. Here an unusually horrible slaughter of political
prisoners and the violation of a foreign legation compelled the United
States to intervene, for fear the European nation concerned might
do something detrimental, again, to the Monroe Doctrine. Although
the protection of foreign and American lives and property was in-
volved, the basic motive for the landing of Marines in Haiti, as in the
case of Cuba, was humanitarian.
Whatever the direct motives for these several courses of action,
through them all has run the advancement of our own economic, as
well as political, welfare. This country of ours has become powerful
in proportion as its southern neighbors have remained weak. We
have known how to utilize our resources; they have not. Because
they have not and we want what lies in their soil and under it, our
captains of industry, aided by the government of the United States,
have put themselves increasingly into the position of showing them
how the things nature has provided should be turned to account.
176 Latin-American Policies [1927
In our virtual protectorates we have followed two quite distinct
procedures: one toward Cuba, Panama and Nicaragua; the other
toward the Dominican Republic and Haiti. Both of them have the
same aims: to encourage American economic enterprise and to pro-
mote the material benefit of the peoples concerned. Neither course of
action has been motivated so much by a determination to exact
reparation for injury committed, as by a desire to prevent such injury.
Lest Americans and their property, as well as foreigners and theirs,
should suffer damage and the Monroe Doctrine be exposed to infiinge-
ment, the plan has been to avert the possibility of either. Commonly,
the intervention has been asked by interested parties, native, Ameri-
can or European, with or without sufficient reason. Whether the
inhabitants of the countries affected relish it or not, is something not
taken into account.
So far as Cuba, Panama and Nicaragua are concerned, the United
States has aided the local authorities to maintain order and adopt
other salutary measures for the general objects in view. Since 1909
Cuba has remained under its own rulers. The same has always been
true of Panama and Nicaragua, even if the personnel of the function-
aries has sometimes been determined by the United States.
Toward the Dominican Republic and Haiti, on the other hand,
the action taken has been quite ruthless. Because of political com-
motions and a disposition to incur indebtedness beyond what the
American guardian thought proper, in 1916 the Dominican govern-
ment was practically abolished. In its place an American military
régime was set up, which stayed on until 1924. Haiti, a year earlier,
had undergone a similar fate, except that the native administration
still continues under the military supervision of an American officer,
now styled a “High Commissioner.”
From the standpoint of the rights presumed to attach to states
which are reputed to be “sovereign and independent,” certainly the
plight of the Dominican Republic and Haiti is much less enviable
than that of their three fellows. To be sure, the American military
rulers have built roads and railways, improved ports, bettered sani-
tary conditions and enlarged educational facilities, but their action
has been accompanied at times by harshness and cruelty to individual
natives, especially in the Negro republic. Both of the little states, also,
have been compelled to assent to treaties providing for huge loans.
No. 44] Uncle Sam, Imperialist 177
These advances from American financiers will contribute, no doubt,
to the material welfare of the countries concerned; so they will to our
own. Doubtless, too, the opposition to American influence there
and in all of the republics under our tutelage where similar loans have
been the order of the day, is political, rather than the result of actual
wrongs inflicted. But is political opposition on the part of reluctant
wards toward their self-appointed mentor nothing of any moment?
A much more intriguing question now presents itself. Is there a
possible ratio between the extent of American governmental control
and the manner of its exercise, on the one side, and the increase in
American investments, on the other? Has there been any apparent
connection between the growth of American financial interests and a
tendency of our Department of State to practice, through diplomatic
pressure, with Marines posted in the background, political inter-
ference in the internal affairs of the republics? Let us cite the case of
Cuba.
In the joint resolution of April, 1898, which brought on the war
with Spain, Congress declared that the United States disclaimed any
intention to exercise control over Cuba except for its pacification,
and would leave the government and control of the island to its own
people. Events, however, soon indicated that the government was
indeed to be left, but not the control. Three years later, the so-called
“Platt Amendment,” which the Cubans were obliged to incorporate
into their constitution, provided among other things that the United
States was to possess the right to intervene in the republic for the
preservation of its independence and the maintenance of a govern-
ment capable of protecting life, property and individual liberty, and
that Cuba should contract no excessive indebtedness. The former of
these stipulations the United States has enforced on several occasions.
The application of the latter appears to stand in quite a different
category, although in essence the ultimate means employed have been
the same.
In 1904 the first loan contract made with Cuba by an American
banking house provided for no financial administration by Americans,
and contained no allusions to the government of the United States
as a party to the agreement. From that time onward, moreover, such
contracts regularly have stipulated that the amount loaned consti-
tutes a lien upon the customs revenue, or even on all sources of public
178 Latin-American Policies [1937
income, of the country concerned, as security for the interest on, and
amortization of, the bonds as issued. These in turn, as to both prin-
cipal and interest, are exempt from domestic taxation.
Beginning in 1905, sometimes by “executive agreement” between
the President of the United States and the appropriate authorities
in a given republic when the Senate would not assent, sometimes by
formal treaty, no fewer than five methods have been devised for insur-
ing payment. As the table shows [not reprinted], in Cuba the customs
revenues are administered by Cuban officials; in the Dominican Repub-
lic, by an American General Receiver, named by the President of the
United States; in Nicaragua, by an American Collector, acting under
the orders of a High Commission, one of whose three members is
chosen by our Department of State and one by American bondholders.
In Haiti, the entire revenue system of the country is in the hands of
an American General Receiver and an American Financial Advisor,
appointed by the president of the republic on the nomination of the
President of the United States, who also appoints the High Commis-
sioner over all. The case of El Salvador, not one of the virtual pro-
tectorates, and yet illustrative of the fifth method, is even more signifi-
cant. For the service of a loan, contracted in 1922, the collection of
70 per cent, and, if necessary, all, of its customs revenues is attended
to by an American official chosen by an American corporation witk
the approval of our Department of State. Nor are extensive loans
likely to be made anywhere in Latin America without seeking in ad-
vance the approval of that branch of our national administration.
Considering the financial relationship of Cuba to the United States,
. . . between 1899 and 1916 the estimated amount of American in-
vestments in the island increased from $50,000,000 to $400,000,000 ,
whereas between 1916 and 1925 it rose to $1,360,000,000. But it
was precisely during these nine years that the influence of our govern-
ment over Cuban political and financial affairs became altogether
marked. After 1918, and acting in compliance with a series of mem-
oranda from an army officer of high rank, sent as personal represent-
ative of the President of the United States and later appointed
American ambassador to the republic, the Cuban congress passed a
large number of enactments aimed at improving political and eco-
nomic conditions. They included: new electoral laws; suspension of
certain provisions of the civil service law, so as to permit the presi-
No. 44] Uncle Sam, Imperialist 179
dent of Cuba to shift the personnel of administrative departments;
facilitation of the removal of judges; revision of the tariff; changes
in the budget; reorganization of the system of accounting; the clear-
ing up of indebtedness, and the floating of an American loan of $50,-
000,000, placed as a lien upon the entire national revenue and under
the virtual guarantee of the government of the United States. All
of this might argue that the jurisdiction of the United States over
the financial concerns of Cuba has made some progress since 1901,
when the republic was obligated only to contract no excessive in-
debtedness!
In handling the affairs of our neighbors in and around the Carib-
bean, with or without their codperation, four general policies have
been brought into play. They may be designated by as many words:
regulation, annexation, neutralization, and abstention. Certain islands
have been annexed; a Central American country (Honduras) has been
neutralized and, where the political and economic interests of the
United States have seemed to permit it, abstention from interference
in internal situations or international relations among the several
republics has been practiced. But the general policy most in vogue
has been that of regulation, whereby whatever those neighbors do is
subject in greater or less degree to American control. For its exercise,
four methods of action have been followed: (1) recognition of a par-
ticular government; (2) the severance of diplomatic relations—which
means the same thing as the newly coined and misleading expression,
“withdrawal of recognition”; (3) the levying or the lifting of an em-
bargo on the shipment of arms and munitions, and (4) military inter-
vention.
Phases of this policy of regulation are visible just now in our deal-
ings with little Nicaragua and Panama and with bigger Mexico. The
legitimate successor to an erstwhile president in Nicaragua, not rec-
ognized by the United States, is forcibly prevented from taking his
official seat, because our government regards another person as better
suited to our interests, political and economic. The allegation that
the installation of the personage who is not our candidate might im-
peril the canal which we have not begun to construct is—amusing.
The supposition that, in collaboration with Mexico, he and his band of
partisans might conjure up the “spectre of a Mexican-fostered
Bolshevist hegemony intervening between the United States and the
180 Latin-American Policies [1927
Panama Canal” is—terrifying, indeed, to the richest and most power-
ful nation on earth! If the United States recognizes one “president ”
in Nicaragua, Mexico mustn’t recognize another; if, for the benefit
of its protégé, the United States lifts an embargo on the shipment of
arms and munitions, Mexico has no business to allow Mexican ar-
maments and soldiers of fortune to be used for the advantage of its own
alleged disciple. As to Panama, that small state has been induced to
enter into a treaty of alliance with this country, whereby it stands
pledged to coöperate in the military defense of the Canal, despite its
solemn obligations as a member of the League of Nations.
The nigger in the Nicaraguan wood-pile is evidently the issue—on
quite different grounds—between the United States and its neighbor
immediately to the south of the Rio Grande. In order to enforce our
will, we appear to menace Mexico with the threat of severing diplo-
matic relations and lifting the embargo on arms and munitions, which
would result, probably, in putting the country anew into the throes of
civil war. Yet the problem need not be solved in this fashion. With
all due respect for “national honor and vital interests,” the matters
in dispute might be adjusted by a resort to the Permanent Court of
International Arbitration at The Hague, of which the United States
is a sponsor.
Our country may not “covet an inch of our neighbors’ territory”;
yet somehow it seems to have been exemplifying on this side of the
Atlantic what John Galsworthy described as a characteristic of the
motherland on the other—“ the possessive instinct of the nation on
the move.” Of the measures we have taken in the Caribbean, the
eventual outcome is painfully clear. If we go on as we have begun,
the American empire must ultimately bestride the entire area. Polit-
ically, the republics within it may remain “sovereign and independ-
ent”—in the language of diplomacy. Economically, they would
become a happy hunting ground for American capitalists, upheld
and protected by their government. The Monroe Doctrine then will
deserve the definition given in the Covenant of the League of Nations:
a “regional understanding” about a sphere of influence for a great
power.
Of this broadening out of the United States over its huge preserve,
bounded by the wall of the Monroe Doctrine, the nations of Europe
doubtless would disapprove. Even though we are only emulating
No. 45] Pan-American Problems IŜI
their own example elsewhere in the world, they are likely to object
to such behavior on our part, just as the Latin-American republics
still outside the sphere will cherish resentment. Both will vent their
feelings in hard words, if nothing worse. But what does that matter?
Business is business. And southward the course of empire takes its
way.
Piar, R. Shepherd, in New Republic, January 26, 1927 (New York), XLIX,
266-269.
45. Pan-American Problems (1928)
BY EX-SECRETARY CHARLES EVANS HUGHES
Hughes, eminent lawyer and statesman, has twice been Governor of New York,
served on the United States Supreme Court from rọro to 1916, was defeated for
the Presidency in 1916, acted as Secretary of State under Harding and Coolidge,
1921-1925, and was appointed a member of the Permanent Court of International
Justice at The Hague in 1928. The speech quoted here was made in his capacity
as Chairman of the United States delegation to the sixth Pan-American Confer-
ence, held in Havana, 1928.
E cherish the thought that Cuba in her liberty and inde-
pendence is the vindication of the idealism of the people of
the United States. It is that idealism which, at the beginning, during
the struggles of over 100 years ago nurtured our policy in this hemi-
sphere. It is that idealism which has ever been the guardian of our
liberty at home.
You will find us keen in trade, zealous for the advantages of com-
mercial intercourse, but no one knows us well who fails to recognize,
despite all our shortcomings, the dominance among us of the ideals
of independence and democracy. These brought us to the aid of
Cuba in 1898 and again summoned us with imperative command to
take our part in the titanic contest of the World War.
You cannot adequately explain the United States in statistics of
population, of commerce or of wealth. There is a power above all
these which gives final direction to our public opinion and establishes
the standards of our statesmanship, according to which we take
measure of executives and legislators.
182 Latin-American Policies [1928
If you would find what we worship in our inmost thought, do not
rest content with going to our marts, but visit our shrines. We like
to be thought shrewd, but we erect no monuments to mere shrewdness.
We reserve our highest veneration for the greatest exemplars of liberty
and independence—Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln. They are
still, and I trust ever will be, the true spokesmen of the American
spirit.
But this idealism is that of a practical and industrious people.
We rejoice with you in the material gains of progress. With vast
and increasing populations there must be opportunities well used
to give talent its proper place and workers their full reward, or we
should have the discontent that leads to anarchy rather than the
codperative efforts which give better standards of living and a wider-
diffused prosperity.
The advancement of civilization is in the care of the factory, the
plantation, the markets of commerce as well as the halls of learning.
Progress must have its economic basis, and the commercial movement
between North America and Latin America is one which in the main
is equally satisfactory to the statesman and the economist. The steady
development of our commercial exchanges reflects the contrasts of
products and of industrial needs.
We could not be satisfied with the expansion of commercial relations
if these contacts failed to develop a better understanding and a more
comprehensive and sympathetic view of the lives and the problems
of our peoples.
There is no guarantee of friendship in disregard of differences.
The differences in individuals, groups and nations save life from
monotony and give to our contacts a never-failing fascination. But,
however noteworthy the varieties of our particular environments, our
resemblances are more fundamental than our differences. Even
our problems, to the keen observer, have many elements in common.
Underneath the superficial contrasts there is the bond of fellowship
between democratic peoples in their age-long quest of solidarity,
efficiency and equal justice. It may be a long journey to our goal, but
we are on the way. At the sixth Pan-American Conference we are
taking counsel together to help us onward.
Pan-Americanism rests upon four pillars. The first is independence.
It is the firm policy of the United States to respect the territorial
No. 45] Pan-American Problems 183
integrity of the American republics. We have no policy of aggression.
We wish for all of them, not simply those great in area and population
and wealth, but for every one, to the very smallest, strength and not
weakness. What a fatuous idea it would be to think that the United
States desired that any of these States should be weak or the prey of
disorder. There is no promise for the United States in that. We
do not wish their territory. We have troubles enough at home with-
out seeking responsibilities abroad. The rights we assert for our-
selves we accord to others.
Nothing could be happier for the United States than that all the
countries in the region of the Caribbean should be strong, self-suffi-
cient, fulfilling their destiny, settling their problems, with peace at
home and the fulfillment of their obligations abroad. It is in the
strength of these Powers, as equal and responsible States, and not
in the weakness of any, that lies our confidence for future tranquillity
and the mutual benefits of intercourse.
The second pillar of Pan-Americanism is stability. Independence
is not enough. Independence gives opportunity, but stability is
essential to take advantage of it. It is our desire to encourage stability
in the interest of independence. Let me recall to you an illustration:
Several years ago, in circumstances which it is not necessary for
me to review, the United States entered Santo Domingo. But what
did we do? Did we endeavor to stay? On the contrary, we labored
to get out. It would have been very easy to remain, but the Govern-
ment of the United States was most solicitous to arrange for the
termination of its occupation and the withdrawal of its forces, and
endeavored earnestly and successfully to aid the Dominican people
in establishing a sound basis for an independent Government. The
leaders of all parties were brought together for conversation. A plan
of evacuation was agreed upon; arrangements were made for the
provisional Government and for the establishment of a permanent
Government. These arrangements were carried out and the United
States withdrew. It was my happy privilege to be associated with
these endeavors which had this successful fruition. If we had cherished
an imperialistic purpose we should have remained in Santo Domingo;
but we withdrew. We would leave Haiti at any time that we had
reasonable expectations of stability and could be assured that the
withdrawal would not be the occasion for a recurrence of bloodshed.
184 Latin-American Policies [1928
Meanwhile, we are endeavoring in every important direction to
assist in the establishment of conditions for stability and prosperity,
not that we may stay in Haiti, but that we may get out at the earliest
opportunity. We are at this moment in Nicaragua, but what we are
doing there and the commitments we have made are at the request
of both parties and in the interest of peace and order and a fair elec-
tion. We have no desire to stay. We wish Nicaragua to be strong,
prosperous and independent. We entered to meet an imperative but
temporary exigency; and we shall retire as soon as it is possible.
The third pillar of Pan-Americanism is mutual good-will. Strong
and stable Governments that do not trust each other afford no as-
surance of peace and beneficent collaboration. Good-will does not
mean identity of views. It is not jeopardized by candid, but at all
times friendly, expressions, albeit there are differences of opinion.
The enemies of good-will are on every hand. There are those who seek
to find in every act a wrongful motive; who poison the air with suspi-
cion; who will never be content. Good-will rests on mutual respect,
upon a common appreciation that each harbors no mistrust of the
other. We desire the wide dissemination of information, but, unfor-
tunately, good works, the calm and quiet efforts of those who have
the good-will of nations at heart, rarely contain elements of sensation.
The enemies of our peace and happiness often get the centre of the
stage and their declamations fill the air. But this need not discourage
us. In the case of an honorable individual, we know that it is his
reputation with his intimates—with those who know his purposes
and activities—that gradually extends in ever-widening circles until
it becomes proof against any possible assault. So it is with nations.
The fourth pillar of Pan-Americanism is codperation. Peace and
good-will are not ends, but means. They give us the promise, but not
fruit. It is in our working together that we reap the benefits which
friendly relations should bestow. Codperation among the Pan-
American States does not mean the organization of a superstate.
It does not mean that any of the twenty-one American republics or
any group of these republics will attempt to dominate others. It is
the codperation of equals for common advantage in those directions
where there is prospect of success. Codperation does not mean that
we should ignore difference in conditions and in the varied circum-
stances surrounding our lives. It means mutual helpfulness, where
No. 45] Pan-American Problems 185
we can be of assistance by doing together what we cannot so well
do alone. It is not for us to be wearied with futile anxieties about the
future. It is for us, in our day and generation to play our part. And
if we do that with sincerity of purpose and an earnest desire to advance
the cause of civilization so far as it is in our keeping, future genera-
tions will rejoice in the inheritance of our labors.
Address before American Chamber of Commerce, Havana, Cuba, January 20, 1928.
In New York Times Current History, March, 1928 (New York), 861-862.
PART IV
INTERNATIONAL ASPECTS
CHAPTER IX — EUROPEAN FOREIGN
RELATIONS
46. The Consular Service Aids Trade (1901)
BY FREDERICK L. EMORY
Emory (1867-1921) was Professor of Mechanics and Applied Mathematics at
West Virginia University. He was a contributor to technical publications.—On
foreign trade, see bibliography with No. 48 below.—On the diplomatic service in
general, see No. 205 below.
UR progress in foreign markets is the more extraordinary
because of the general lack, until very recently, of organized or
intelligent effort by our manufacturers or by our exporters to cater
to any but our own consumers. With most defective and inefficient
methods, we have surprised ourselves and the world at large by
suddenly emerging from our absorption in domestic trade as a potent
factor of international commerce.
The same result has been reached in a branch of our Government
machinery which a few years ago seemed but little likely to challenge
the emulation of other countries, and is still the object of much well-
meaning but ignorant criticism, not by foreigners, but by would-be
reformers at home. For it is only lately that the consular service
of the United States has come to be regarded by the best authorities
abroad as the most efficient organization of its kind in the world for
spreading the sale of goods, for stimulating home industry and enter-
prise, and for informing exporters as to trade conditions in every
important market of the globe.
186
No. 46] The Consular Service Aids Trade 187
In view of the demand from various quarters for reforms in our con-
sular system, this, doubtless, will be regarded as a surprising state-
ment, but it is one that is abundantly borne out by the facts. It is
the fashion to argue that, because the consular service is largely made
up of men appointed for merely political or personal reasons, therefore
its fruits must necessarily be bad. But it sometimes happens that a
system confessedly faulty produces some good results; and paradoxical
as it may seem, there are foreign experts who consider the frequent
changes in our consular corps, which most of our reformers denounce
as wholly pernicious, to be one of the reasons which explain the
admittedly greater usefulness of American consuls in promoting trade.
Six years ago the commercial world of Great Britain was beginning
to take note of the practical character of the reports on commerce
and industry by American consuls, and the promptness with which
they were printed and distributed by the Department of State. The
British Chambers of Commerce were called upon by the Executive
Council to consider “the action taken by the Government of the
United States and by other governments by means of special con-
sular reports, in order to supply their traders with information up to
date with regard to openings for business in foreign countries,” and
the opinion was expressed that the practical value of the reports
of British consuls “would be much increased if they afforded more
direct and early suggestions and details with respect to trade questions
of present interest.” The local chambers of commerce were, therefore,
invited to make suggestions as to trade inquiries by consuls for sub-
mission to the Foreign Office. . . .
The British agitation of the subject continued, and about a year ago
a commercial intelligence branch of the Board of Trade (a govern-
ment bureau) was established, and the organ of the board, the Board
of Trade Journal, was converted from a monthly into a weekly period-
ical, in order that consular and other commercial reports of current
interest might be given more promptly to the public. .. .
Germany, with her splendidly equipped commercial schools and
admirable machinery for extending foreign trade, seems also to con-
sider her facilities deficient by comparison with the American in the
matter of procuring and promptly distributing commercial informa-
tion, and has recently begun the publication, declaredly “after the
mode of the United States Department of State,” of special consular
188 European Foreign Relations [z902
reports upon trade matters, products, economic questions, etc.,
prepared by German consuls in reply to interrogatories or specific
instructions from the government.
Dr. Vosberg-Rekow, the head of the Central Bureau for preparing
commercial treaties, in a recent book upon commercial treaties, in
which he expresses the opinion that the United States is likely to be
Germany’s strongest rival in industrial competition, speaks of our
consular officers in Europe as “inspectors of our exports and vigilant
sentinels who spy out every trade opening or advantage and promptly
report it.” In another place he says:—
“The Americans have acted judiciously in establishing a system
which is of the greatest advantage to themselves, but costly and
inconvenient to their competitors. In all countries with which it
has trade relations, the United States has stationed consuls and
consular agents. Every shipment of goods to a United States port
must pass through the hands of these officials, and the amount,
value, place of origin, market price ruling in the country of production,
method of production, etc., are noted. The consuls thus dive deeply
into the economic condition of their districts and obtain information
the result of which is discernible in the steadily increasing exportations
of their home country.”
Among the practical business men who appeared before the Com-
mittee on Foreign Relations at the hearing in May last, there was
one who put his finger on a weak spot which seems fully to justify
the demand for legislative reform. “I have come to believe,” he
said, “that the lack in our consular service is owing more to the
short tenure of office than to the quality of the material that is
originally appointed, and any bill that will give opportunity for our
consuls to perfect themselves in the requirements which all must
gain when they take the field, will add to the efficiency of the service.”
Perhaps there would not be so much opposition to consular reform
if it concentrated itself upon the effort to obtain greater stability of
tenure and an equitable system of rewards for meritorious service
and to secure a much needed elasticity in permitting the transfer,
at the option of the Department of State, of any consular officer
from one post to another, as occasion required. It is but natural
that the present incumbents and their friends should antagonize a
movement which proposes to make their continuance in office depend
No. 46] The Consular Service Aids Trade 189
upon a drastic scheme of examinations. No doubt, they would be
much more placable, if assured that they were not to be rudely jostled
or perhaps thrown out by the reform, so long as they continued to
do satisfactory work.
The truth is that the politiciar who is appointed to a consular
post is usually something besides a mere party worker. As a rule,
he is a newspaper man, a merchant, a manufacturer (even if it be
only in a small way), who is more or less in touch with business
affairs, and there are but few who rely upon politics exclusively as
a means of support. And it must be admitted that even with the
handicap of the “spoils” instinct, he sometimes does better work for
our business men than would a carefully trained neophyte who has
aever rubbed about in practical life.
Undoubtedly, the movement which is rapidly gaining headway in
our colleges for special courses to train young men for the diplomatic
and consular services is a wholesome feature of the general tendency
toward the adoption of more intelligent, more scientific, methods in
our government service, and also in the development of our export
trade. Training of this kind is an excellent specific for the evils
complained of, but the experience of other countries proves that it
is easy to take an overdose. By all means give us educated consuls;
but may it not be found wiser to insist that they shall first have
served an apprenticeship (such as most of the present consuls have
served) in a newspaper office, a countinghouse, a workshop, or a bank?
The same considerations do not apply to the diplomatic service,
which is essentially a polite profession in which the greater the degree
of intellectual and social training, the better the results. In this
field, the special courses of colleges and the test of academic attain-
ments can work no serious harm, but, on the contrary, should prove
most helpful. The burden of all the demands of reform in the consular
service is greater efficiency in trade, and how is this to be secured if
not by making it a primary qualification of consular officers that they
shall have a practical knowledge of and adaptability for the most
important of the duties they are to discharge?
Frederick L. Emory, Our Consuls and Our Trade, in World’s Work, May, 1901
(New York), II, 751-757 passim.
190 European Foreign Relations [1902
47. Warning to the German Emperor (1902)
BY EX-PRESIDENT THEODORE ROOSEVELT AND SECRETARY
JOHN HAY
The last two paragraphs are by John Hay; the rest is quoted from Roosevelt,
for whom see Nos. 23-26 above.—Bibliography as in No. 23 above.
HERE is now no reason why I should not speak of the facts
connected with the disagreement between the United States
and Germany over the Venezuela matter in the early part of my
administration as President, and of the final amicable settlement of
the disagreement.
At that time the Venezuelan Dictator-President Castro had com-
mitted various offences against different European nations, including
Germany and England. The English Government was then endeav-
oring to keep on good terms with Germany, and on this occasion
acted jointly with her. Germany sent a squadron of war vessels to the
Venezuelan coast, and they were accompanied by some English war
vessels. There was no objection whatever to Castro’s being punished,
as long as the punishment did not take the form of seizure of territory
and its more or less permanent occupation by some Old-World Power.
At this particular point such seizure of territory would have been a
direct menace to the United States, because it would have threatened
or partially controlled the approach to the projected Isthmian Canal.
I speedily became convinced that Germany was the leader, and
the really formidable party in the transaction; and that England was
merely following Germany’s lead in rather half-hearted fashion. I
became convinced that England would not back Germany in the
event of a clash over the matter between Germany and the United
States, but would remain neutral; I did not desire that she should do
more than remain neutral. I also became convinced that Germany
intended to seize some Venezuelan harbor and turn it into a strongly
fortified place of arms, on the model of Kiauchau, with a view to
exercising some degree of control over the future Isthmian Canal, and
over South American affairs generally.
For some time the usual methods of diplomatic intercourse were
tried. Germany declined to agree to arbitrate the question at issue
No. 47] Warning to the German Emperor IQI
between her and Venezuela, and declined to say that she would not
take possession of Venezuelan territory, merely saying that such
possession would be “temporary ”—which might mean anything. I
finally decided that no useful purpose would be served by further
delay, and I took action accordingly. I assembled our battle fleet,
under Admiral Dewey, near Porto Rico, for “manœuvres,” with
instructions that the fleet should be kept in hand and in fighting
trim, and should be ready to sail at an hour’s notice. The fact that
the fleet was in West Indian waters was of course generally known;
but I believe that the Secretary of the Navy, and Admiral Dewey,
and perhaps his Chief of Staff, and the Secretary of State, John Hay,
were the only persons who knew about the order for the fleet to be
ready to sail at an hour’s notice. I told John Hay that I would now
see the German Ambassador, Herr von Holleben, myself, and that
I intended to bring matters to an early conclusion. Our navy was
in very efficient condition, being superior to the German navy.
I saw the Ambassador, and explained that in view of the presence
of the German squadron on the Venezuelan coast I could not permit
longer delay in answering my request for an arbitration, and that I
could not acquiesce in any seizure of Venezuelan territory. The
Ambassador responded that his Government could not agree to
arbitrate, and that there was no intention to take “permanent”
possession of Venezuelan territory. I answered that Kiauchau was
not a “permanent” possession of Germany’s—that I understood that
it was merely held by a ninety-nine years’ lease; and that I did not
intend to have another Kiauchau, held by similar tenure, on the
approach to the Isthmian Canal. The Ambassador repeated that
his Government would not agree to arbitrate. I then asked him to
inform his Government that if no notification for arbitration came
within a certain specified number of days I should be obliged to order
Dewey to take his fleet to the Venezuelan coast and see that the
German forces did not take possession of any territory. He expressed
very grave concern, and asked me if I realized the serious consequences
that would follow such action; consequences so serious to both coun-
tries that he dreaded to give them a name. I answered that I had
thoroughly counted the cost before I decided on the step, and asked
him to look at the map, as a glance would show him that there was
no spot in the world where Germany in the event of a conflict with
192 European Foreign Relations [1902
the United States would be at a greater disadvantage than in the
Caribbean Sea.
A few days later the Ambassador came to see me, talked pleasantly
on several subjects, and rose to go. I asked him if he had any answer
to make from his Government to my request, and when he said no,
I informed him that in such event it was useless to wait as long as
I had intended, and that Dewey would be ordered to sail twenty-four
hours in advance of the time I had set. He expressed deep apprehen-
sion, and said that his Government would not arbitrate. However,
less than twenty-four hours before the time I had appointed for
cabling the order to Dewey, the Embassy notified me that His
Imperial Majesty the German Emperor had directed him to request
me to undertake the arbitration myself. I felt, and publicly expressed,
great gratification at this outcome, and great appreciation of the
course the German Government had finally agreed to take. Later
I received the consent of the German Government to have the arbi-
tration undertaken by the Hague Tribunal, and not by me. .
The German and British Governments firmly counted on our well-
established jellyfish squashiness and felt sure they had a free hand.
The Kaiser and Junker party especially had everything cut and dried,
and counted the affair as accomplished. The first time, Holleben
informed his Government that probably Roosevelt’s attitude was a
bluff; but on second thought went to his friend Buenz for advice,
as B. knew the American people better than any German living, and
was a close friend of Roosevelt’s (I introduced him) and hence a
good judge of the situation. Buenz at once assured him that Roosevelt
was not bluffing, and that he could count on his doing as threatened;
and that in a conversation Roosevelt had shown that he had an
intimate knowledge of the strength and condition of the German
fleet which was . . . [then] no match for ours.
Holleben was obliged to eat his own words and telegraph in hot
haste to Berlin, where his message fell like a bombshell. You know
the rest. This resulted in Holleben’s being recalled and dismissed
from the diplomatic service.
William Roscoe Thayer, Life and Letters of John Hay (Boston, Houghton Mifflin,
1915), II, 411-416 passim. Reprinted by special permission of the publishers.
No. 48] America and European Competitors 193
48. America and European Competitors (1916)
BY WALTER E. WEYL
Weyl (1873-1919) was statistical expert on international commerce for the
United States Bureau of Statistics. He conducted investigations for the U. S.
Department of Labor in 1898, in Mexico in 1901, and in Porto Rico. Author of The
Passenger Traffic of Railways (1901), The New Democracy (1911), American World
Policies (1917); also various bulletins for the Department of Labor.—Bibliography:
Harold U. Faulkner, American Economic History; Garet Garrett, The American
Omen; Clarence F. Jones, Commerce of South America; and various pamphlet pub-
lications of the Department of Commerce.
T is true that the world market constantly expands, but the
producing capacity of the manufacturing nations also increases
and competition becomes ever more severe. The more rapidly
America invades the markets which Europe has hitherto held, the
more she squeezes them, the more bitter the feeling against her will
become.
That bitterness of feeling (in the conditions preceding the present
war) was more likely to arise in Germany than in England and more
likely in England than in France. We have spoken of these as rival
nations, but there are intensities of rivalry varying in proportion to
the similarity of products and of methods of production. Germany,
like the United States, is a newcomer in international industry,
pushing and aggressive. More scientific and better organised than
we, she possesses far more meagre resources. We both have trusts
or cartels, and both manufacture huge quantities of cheap, standard-
ised products. Our competition therefore is of the keenest, and is
likely to grow more intense, if, as seems likely, Germany recovers
from the effects of this war. Less keen is our competition with
Great Britain. Like an old firm, grown rich and conservative, Great
Britain is not pushing, not scientific, not well organised. We are
gaining on her in those branches of manufacture which permit stand-
ardisation and production in huge quantities, and have no hope, and
but little wish, of competing in articles of high finish and therefore
high labour cost. With France we compete still less, since much of
her export trade is in articles of taste and luxury, in which we are
hopelessly inferior.
In this battle for the world market, the United States has the
194 European Foreign Relations [ror¢
disadvantage of coming late and of being intellectually unprepared.
On the other hand, not only have we superior natural resources, but
also the advantage that to us success is not vital. Whatever trade
we gain is a mere improvement of a cituation already good. We
are playing “on velvet.” Finally, like Germany, we have the advan-
tage of large scale production by strong corporations working with
what is practically a bounty upon exports. Because of their control
of a protected home market, our great corporations can make their
sales at home cover all initia! and constant costs, and as these costs
need not be applied to exports, we are able to sell goods cheaper in
Rio Janeiro or Lima than in Chicago or New York. They are able
to “dump” their surplus goods. . . .
If our foreign commerce was gaining before the war, it has made
even greater progress since the outbreak of hostilities. While Ger-
many’s foreign commerce has been temporarily destroyed and that
of Great Britain has been hampered by the war, our total commerce
has immensely increased. In the year 1915 we exported over a billion
dollars in excess of our exports of 1913, our exports in the latter year
exceeding those of the United Kingdom or of any other country in
any year of its history. This development, it is true, was abnormal
and consisted partly in increases in prices and temporary deflections
in trade. Nevertheless, while many American industries, especially
those engaged in the manufacture of war munitions, will suffer severely
at the end of the war, and while our export of such commodities will
dwindle, the war cannot but result in a relative advantage to American
manufacturers of export commodities.
Moreover, the war by destroying established connections between
neutral countries and their natural purveyors of manufactured goods
in Europe has opened the way to future extension of American exports.
Like a protective tariff, it gives an initial advantage to Americans,
and helps them to overcome the early handicaps. It induces American
manufacturers to think in terms of foreign markets instead of con-
centrating their attention upon a protected home market. In the
beginning, it is true, the buying capacity of certain countries, such
as those of South America, was diminished by the shattering of
financial arrangements with Europe. But such a condition is purely
temporary. ...
American manufacturers are to-day determined to secure an in
No. 48] America and European Competitors 195
creased share of this expanding market. They are slowly learning
that you cannot push your goods, in South America let us say, unless
you learn to pack your goods, have studied local requirements, are
willing to print catalogues in Spanish and Portuguese, and have your
salesmen know these languages. In the past Americans have been
hampered by their unwillingness or inability to extend long credits,
but this drawback is being removed by the improvement of banking
facilities. The government, moreover, now seeks actively to promote
American trade with foreign countries, and especially with Latin
America. A new merchant marine is epecied to give additional
facilities to American exporters and enable them to meet their British
and German competitors on more nearly equal terms. Moreover,
the United States is learning that in the export trade coöperation is
desirable, and the Federal Trade Commission seems about to grant
permission to manufacturers to combine for the conduct of business
in foreign countries.
All this does not mean that American manufacturers are completely
to displace their European competitors in South America and other
markets. Competition after the war will be severe, and whatever
the course of wages and employment in Europe, a measure of success
for industrial countries like Great Britain, Germany and Belgium is
absolutely essential to the maintenance of their populations. Desper-
ate efforts will be made by these nations to reéstablish their foreign
business. A great part of South America is as near to London and
Rotterdam as to New York, and much of the trade and of its future
increase will revert to Europe. In the years to come, however, more
than in the present or past, the United States will be a formidable
competitor for the world-markets, and will incur enmity and jealousy
in the attempt to maintain and improve its position. A similar devel-
opment is taking place in the field of investment. In former years,
British, French, Dutch, Belgian and German financiers were requested,
indeed begged, to invest their surplus capital in American enterprises.
To these financiers we went cap in hand, and they did not lend their
money cheaply. The complementary relation between lending Europe
and borrowing America was productive of the friendship of mutual
benefit. To-day we are still a debtor. We ourselves have a large
capital, and in the main go to Europe merely for the sale of safer
and less remunerative bonds, while the common stock of new enter-
196 European Foreign Relations [1916
prises is likely to remain in America. Or we graciously “let Europe
in on a good thing,” conferring, not asking, a favour. In the mean-
time, we are paying off our indebtedness as is indicated by the balance
of trade, which since 1876 has almost invariably been strongly in
our favour... .
Even to-day (Nov. 1, 1916) there is still a probable excess of our
debts over our credits with foreign nations of at least two billions
of dollars. In comparison with our total wealth, however (estimated
by the census of 1910 at 207 billions and since then largely increased),
this indebtedness seems comparatively small. The national income
is rapidly expanding and as the chance to secure exceptionally large
profits in railroad and industrial enterprises diminishes there is an
increased temptation for surplus capital to flow abroad. Whether
or not we shall again have recourse to the fund of European capital
in developing our immense resources, it is hardly to be doubted that
we shall increasingly invest in foreign countries, and especially in
Mexico, and elsewhere in the Americas.
Such a development is entirely legitimate and within bounds
desirable both for the United States and to the countries to which
our capital (and trade) will go. The possible field of investment in
Latin America and the Orient, to say nothing of other regions, is
still immensely great, and as capital develops these areas their inter-
national trade will also grow. There is no reason why the United
States should not take its part both in the investment of capital and
the development of trade with these non-industrial countries.
As we so invest and trade, however, we must recognise the direction
in which our policy is leading us and the dangers, both from within
and without, that we are liable to incur. The more we invest the
more we shall come into competition with the investing nations of
Europe. We are already urged to put capital into South America
on the just plea that trade follows investment, and the same forces
that are pushing our trade outward will seek opportunities for invest-
ment in the mines and railroads of the politically backward countries.
Like European nations, we too shall seek for valuable concessions,
and may be tempted (and herein lies the danger) to use political
pressure to secure investment opportunities. What happened in
Morocco, Persia, Egypt, where the financial interests of rival nations
brought them to the verge of war, may occur in Mexico, Venezuela or
|
|
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No. 48] America and European Competitors 197
Colombia, and the United States may be one of the parties in-
volved.
We seem thus to be entering upon an economic competition not
entirely unlike that which existed between Germany and England.
We too have gone over to a policy of extending our foreign markets
and of protecting our foreign investments. More and more we shall
be interested in politically and industrially backward countries, to
which we shall sell and in which we shall invest. Inevitably we shall
face outwards. We shall not be permitted by our own financiers,
manufacturers and merchants, to say nothing of those of Europe, to
hold completely aloof. We have seen, even in the present Mexican
crisis, how American investment tended to precipitate a conflict.
We have learned the same lesson from England, France and Germany.
As we expand both industrially and financially beyond our political
borders we are placed in new, difficult and complicated international
relations, and are forced to determine for ourselves the rôle that
America must play in this great development. We can no longer
stand aside and do nothing, for that is the worst and most dangerous
of policies. We must either plunge into national competitive imperial-
ism, with all its profits and dangers, following our financiers wherever
they lead, or must seek out some method by which the economic
needs and desires of rival industrial nations may be compromised
and appeased, so that foreign trade may go on and capital develop
backward lands without the interested nations flying at each other’s
throat. Isolation, aloofness, a hermit life among the nations is no
longer safe or possible. Whatever our decision the United States
must face the new problem that presents itself, the problem of the
economic expansion of the industrial nations throughout the world.
Walter E. Weyl, American World Policies (New York, Macmillan, 1917), 61-71
passim.
198 European Foreign Relations [1919
49. Appointment of Ministers (1919)
FROM THE REPORT OF THE NATIONAL CIVIL SERVICE REFORM LEAGUE
With the Civil Service Reform League was actively associated William Dudley
Foulke, for whom see No. 30 above. The aim of this organization was to make
merit, and not political connections and services, the basis of retention and promo-
tion in the government service. See also No. 205 below.—Bibliography: F. Van
Dyne, Our Foreign Service.
T the meeting of the Council of the National Civil Service
Reform League, July 26, 1918, President Richard H. Dana,
reading a summary of the report of the special War Committee, said:
It seems imperative that the League should take a fearless, uncompromising
stand on the application of the merit principle to foreign service all along the line,
especially in view of the shameless barter of these positions.
The governing body of the League, its Council, accepting the re-
port of the War Committee, voted unanimously:
That the League advocates the extension of the merit principle to all grades
of the consular and diplomatic services.
An examination shows that all other great nations do apply such a
rule to their foreign service, including the highest grade of Ambas-
sador. A contrary impression seems to prevail in the minds of many
Senators, who allege that the custom of Great Britain is to appoint
distinguished citizens outside the service. In point of fact there
are very few such instances... .
Members of the British service have expressed the opinion that
their Government could not expect to get first-class men to enter the
service if secretaries could not look forward to promotion to the
highest posts. The failure to observe the merit principle causes the
service to work in a vicious circle and brings its own specious excuse.
Thanks to the salary situation and the quota rule a smaller number
of really able men will enter the service and the supporters of political
appointment then point to the quality of the men in the service as a
justification for passing them over. Yet, even with this justification,
a careful examination of the political appointments actually made in
our service compared with the men serving in the highest service
grades of the diplomatic and consular service will be found not un-
favorable to the latter. .
No. 49] Appointment of Ministers 19g
In theory, the appointment of the most distinguished citizens of
the Republic to the post of Minister or Ambassador is excellent, and
there is no doubt that the practice has certain real advantages. The
prime consideration is, alas, that it provides places for “deserving
Democrats” or Republicans, as the case may be. The real significance
of Mr. Bryan’s euphemistic designation of “deserving” is clear when
we examine the relationship between diplomatic appointments and
campaign contributions.
Hon. William Dudley Foulke has ably discussed this matter in
“Fighting the Spoilsmen.” He gives the names of appointees who
made “deserving” contributions to the campaign fund. The editorial
in the New York Sun of February 24, 1914, is likewise to the point.
Representative Rogers also discussed this subject in his speech in
Congress. It is not fair to arraign the present administration as the
sole offender on this score. This remnant of the Jacksonian spoils
system has been retained and applied in varying degrees by all preced-
ing administrations. William Roscoe Thayer, in his “Life of John
Hay,” publishes some interesting correspondence relative to the
appointment of the Ambassador to London.
It is no adequate answer to point to exceptional instances—the
Choates and Bryces—in justification of a system which has meant
the appointment of men like Cameron of Pennsylvania, or Sullivan,
the notorious minister to Santo Domingo. Even in our consular
service the old political appointment system has to its credit such
distinguished names as Nathaniel Hawthorne, William D. Howells
and Bret Harte, but the general average under the spoils system was
low and the whole service sadly inefficient. The rank and file of the
consular appointments were then much below the present, and our
service suffered. The other branch of the service now needs men
thoroughly qualified by training—men who speak French and the
language of the country to which they are sent.
The second alleged advantage in making appointments from with-
out the service is one more openly defended. It is said to give the
President representatives who view the great questions of policy from
the same angle as he does. This is said to make for political harmony.
But when we come to study the question we find that the value of
this argument is more apparent than real. The prevalent idea is that
an Ambassador is a political office like that of a Cabinet Member,
200 European Foreign Relations [r919
and that he should represent the personal views of the administra-
tion. In actual practice the President is more likely to secure the
close coöperation of which he stands in need from diplomats of career
than he will from the heterogeneous group forced upon his considera-
tion for preferment by politicians. Furthermore, we must remember
that several months elapse before the President has cleaned his
diplomatic slate and secured his new representatives. Take, for
example, the ambassadorial appointments when President Wilson
succeeded a Republican administration. An examination will show
that the administration had to work for no inconsiderable period
through the agency of the appointees of the other party. . .. If
the argument of the defenders of political appointments were sound,
it would be inadvisable to allow these hangovers to remain at their
posts one moment after the change of administration.
As against the merits, alleged or real, of the system of political
appointments we must balance the inconvenience of a quaternial
rotation of posts. A man who comes new to his work requires some
time to familiarize himself with the technique and the mere routine
of his new office.. Until he has acquired this he is at a disadvantage
with his colleagues of the diplomatic corps, who can always block his
suggestions by some technical objection. Furthermore, a man new
to the service cannot expect to hold the influence nor so easily gather
political information as his experienced professional colleagues. All
the other countries have tried the political appointment system and
long ago discarded it as less satisfactory. With occasional exceptions
justified by extraordinary circumstances they depend upon profes-
sional diplomats.
The experience of other services has shown that the political heads
of the State have no difficulty in securing the effective coöperation of
the diplomatic representatives abroad. And, be it noted, that political
considerations are of much greater relative importance in the relations
of European countries than has hitherto been the case with the United
States.
In truth, the President is often forced to send abroad men who are
not in harmony with his own ideals. Lincoln sent Cameron to Russia,
and instances abound where diplomats have been appointed to get
rid of a troublesome rival rather than to secure the coöperation of a
sympathetic supporter.
No. 49] Appointment of Ministers 207
After all, it is only in a few posts where personal policies or party
politics are of importance in relation to the direction of foreign affairs,
and even in these posts we repeat the statement that the President
often has little real opportunity to select those who are in close political
communion with him. This is shown by the frequency with which
President Wilson has had recourse to special emissaries—Dr. Bayard
Hale, Commissioner Lind, and especially Colonel E. M. House. Pos-
sibly the condition which we have been discussing may have some-
thing to do with the resignations of many of the men whom President
Wilson had appointed—Ambassador Mayre from Petrograd, Ambas-
sador Sharp from Paris, Minister Page from Rome, Minister Van
Dyke from The Hague, and others.
The abuses which result from the application of the political
appointment system to Ambassadors are less than in the case of
Ministers because of the brighter light of publicity which beats down
upon appointments to the more important posts, but when we come
to far-off States of second rank, the abuses of the political appoint-
ment system become glaring. . . .
At the present time one of the causes for the opposition to the
application of the merit principle to the diplomatic service is the im-
pression which results from the extreme rapidity with which these
promotions sometimes occur. A single administration may make
several promotions of the same individual, so that he seems to stand
to a certain extent in the light of its political protégé. The cause
of these rapid promotions is the rapid rate at which good men leave
our service and the wholesale transfer of places with the change of
administration. When an adequate increase of salary has been made
and the merit principle applied to the promotions of secretaries to
Ministers, we may expect that the majority of men in the service will
receive promotion under the Presidents belonging to both of the
political parties.
Report on The Foreign Service by National Civil Service Reform League (New
York, 1919), 45-55 passim.
CHAPTER X— PLANS FOR WORLD PEACE
50. Clasp Hands, Ye Nations! (1905)
BY WALLACE IRWIN (1906)
This brief poem relates to the ending of the Russo-Japanese War, which
had reached an impasse, with the victorious Japanese virtually exhausted, when
Roosevelt offered his good offices as peacemaker. Representatives of the belliger-
ents met, at his invitation, at Portsmouth, N. H., August 5, 1905. Roosevelt’s
suggestions were of the utmost help in enabling them to agree.—For Irwin, see No.
38 above.—Bibliography: Tyler Dennett, Roosevelt and the Russc-Japanese War.
(The Peace of Portsmouth)
LASP hands, ye Nations, and thank God
The bitter tragedy is done!
Corn shall be planted in the sod
That vengeance long has trod upon.
Clasp hands, ye Foes, across the path
By life-blood dampened as by dew;
The curtains of Almighty wrath
Roll back and let the sunlight through!
In those long camps where armies lie
Between the battle and despair
I think I hear a mighty sigh
Rise up to heaven like a prayer:
“ Giver of Peace, our lives are dear
And we have felt the pains of men;
Thank God the blessed end is here
And we may see our homes again!”
Peace! and the grass may grow once more
Among the gullies and the stones
Where War might still have festered o’er
A continent of skulls and bones.
202
No. 51] America’s Peace Policy 203
Peace! and the fleets of commerce choose
Safe paths on the untroubled deep
Where, buried in the crawling ooze,
The Navies of Misfortune sleep.
Clasp hands, ye Nations, in the prayer
That hell’s fierce work for good be done;
That such a trial by fire may bear
New splendor to the Rising Sun;
And that the Peasants of the North
Through suffering have found a way
To summon Light and Freedom forth
To strike the prison-chains away!
Wallace Irwin, Random Rhymes and Odd Numbers (New York, Macmillan, 1906),
268-269.
Apini ona a
51. America’s Peace Policy (1907)
BY SECRETARY ELIHU ROOT
Root, eminent lawyer, jurist, was Secretary of War in the Cabinets of McKinley
and Roosevelt; in that position he was responsible for the creation of the Army
General Staff in 1903. Later he served, with great distinction, as Secretary of
State. Senator from New York 1909-1915. He has been a strong supporter of
the World Court of International Justice. His speeches and state papers have
been published by the Harvard University Press.—Bibliography: W. M. Mallory
(compiler), Treaties and Conventions, 1776-1909 (Senate Docs., 61 Congress, 2
Sess., No. 357); numerous publications of the World Peace Foundation; publica-
tions of the League of Nations; Joseph H. Choate, The Two Hague Conferences.
See also No. 123 below.
ENTLEMEN,—You have been appointed delegates plenipo-
tentiary to represent the United States at a Second Peace
Conference which is to meet at The Hague on the 15th of June,
TOJI R
fit is not expedient that you should be limited by too rigid instruc-
tions upon the various questions which are to be discussed, for such
a course, if pursued generally with all the delegates, would make the
discussion useless and the Conference a mere formality. You will,
however, keep in mind the following observations regarding the general
policy of the United States upon these questions:
204 Plans for World Peace [1907
t. In the discussions upon every question it is important to remem-
ber that the object of the Conference is agreement, and not compul-
sion. If such conferences are to be made occasions for trying to
force nations into positions which they consider against their interests,
the Powers cannot be expected to send representatives to them. It
is important also that the agreements reached shall be genuine and
not reluctant. Otherwise, they will inevitably fail to receive approval
when submitted for the ratification of the Powers represented. Com-
parison of views and frank and considerate explanation and discussion
may frequently resolve doubts, obviate difficulties, and lead to real
agreement upon matters which at the outset have appeared unsur-
mountable. .. .
The immediate results of such a conference must always be limited
to a small part of the field which the more sanguine have hoped to
see covered; but each successive conference will make the positions
reached in the preceding conference its point of departure, and will
bring to the consideration of further advances toward international
agreement opinions affected by the acceptance and application of the
previous agreements. Each conference will inevitably make further
progress, and, by successive steps, results may be accomplished which
have formerly appeared impossible. . . .
2. The policy of the United States to avoid entangling alliances
and to refrain from any interference or participation in the political
affairs of Europe must be kept in mind, and may impose upon you
some degree of reserve in respect of some of the questions which are
discussed by the Conference. . . .
3. The First Conference adopted the following resolutions:
The Conference is of opinion that the restriction of military charges, which are
at present a heavy burden on the world, is extremely desirable for the increase of
the material and moral welfare of mankind.
The Conference expresses the wish that the Governments, taking into consider-
ation the proposals made at the Conference, may examine the possibility of an
agreement as to the limitation of armed forces by land and sea and of war budgets.
Under these circumstances this Government has been and still is
of the opinion that this subject should be regarded as unfinished
business, and that the Second Conference should ascertain and give
full consideration to the results of such examination as the Govern-
ments may have given to the possibility of an agreement pursuant
No. 51] America’s Peace Policy 205
to the wish expressed by the First Conference. We think that there
should be a sincere effort to learn whether, by conference and discus-
sion, some practicable formula may not be worked out which would
have the effect of limiting or retarding the increase of armaments.
There is, however, reason to believe not only that there has been
the examination by the respective Governments for which the First
Conference expressed a wish, but that discussion of its results has
been forestalled by a process of direct communication between a
majority of the Governments having the greatest immediate interest
in the subject. These communications have been going on actively
among the different Governments for nearly a year, and as a result
at least four of the European Powers have announced their unwilling-
ness to continue the discussion in the Conference. .
If any European power proposes consideration of the subject, you
will vote in favor of consideration and do everything you properly
can to promote it. If, on the other hand, no European Power proposes
consideration of the subject, and no new and affirmative evidence is
presented to satisfy you that a useful purpose would be subserved
hy your making such a proposal, you may assume that the limitations
above stated by way of guidance to your action preclude you from
asking the Conference to consider the subject.
4. The other subject which the United States specifically reserved
the right to propose for consideration is the attainment of an agree-
ment to observe some limitation upon the use of force for the collection
of ordinary public debts arising out of contract.
It has long been the established policy of the United States not to
use its Army and Navy for the collection of ordinary contract debts
due to its citizens by other Governments. This Government has not
considered the use of force for such a purpose consistent with that
respect for the independent sovereignty of other members of the
family of nations which is the most important principle of inter-
national law and the chief protection of weak nations against the
oppression of the strong. It seems to us that the practice is injurious
in its general effect upon the relation of nations and upon the welfare
of weak and disordered States, whose development ought to be
encouraged in the interests of civilization; that it offers frequent
temptation to bullying and oppression and to unnecessary and
unjustifiable warfare. It is doubtless true that the non-payment of
206 Plans for World Peace [1907
such debts may be accomplished by such circumstances of fraud and
wrong-doing or violation of treaties as to justify the use of force;
but we should be glad to see an international consideration of this
subject which would discriminate between such cases and the simple
non-performance of a contract with a private person, and a resolution
in favor of reliance upon peaceful means in cases of the latter
class iasi
5. In the general field of arbitration two lines of advance are
clearly indicated. The first is to provide for obligatory arbitration
as broad in scope as now appears to be practicable, and the second is
to increase the effectiveness of the system, so that nations may more
readily have recourse to it voluntarily.
You are familiar with the numerous expressions in favor of the
settlement of international disputes by arbitration on the part both
of the Congress and of the Executive of the United States.
So many separate treaties of arbitration have been made between
individual countries that there is little cause to doubt that the time
is now ripe for a decided advance in this direction. . . .
In December, 1904, and January, 1905, my predecessor, Mr. Hay,
concluded separate arbitration treaties between the United States
and Great Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Switzer-
land, Austria-Hungary, Sweden and Norway, and Mexzico. . . . The
first article of each of these treaties was as follows:
Differences which may arise of a legal nature, or relating to the interpretation
of treaties existing between the two Contracting Parties, and which it may not
have been possible to settle by diplomacy, shall be referred to the Permanent Court
of Arbitration established at The Hague by the Convention of the 29th July, 1899,
provided, nevertheless, that they do not affect the vital interests, the independence,
or the honor of the two Contracting States, and do not concern the interests of
third Parties.
To this extent you may go in agreeing to a general treaty of arbitra-
tion, and to secure such a treaty you should use your best and most
earnest efforts. ...
. . . There can be no doubt that the principal objection to arbitra-
tion rests not upon the unwillingness of nations to submit their con-
troversies to impartial arbitration, but upon an apprehension that the
arbitration to which they submit may not be impartial. It has been
a very general practice for arbitrators to act, not as judges deciding
No. 51] America’s Peace Policy 207
questions of fact and law upon the record before them under a sense
of judicial responsibility, but as negotiators effecting settlements of
the questions brought before them in accordance with the tradition
and usages and subject to all the considerations and influences which
affect diplomatic agents. The two methods are radically different,
proceed upon different standards of honorable obligation, and fre-
quently lead to widely differing results. It very frequently happens
that a nation which would be very willing to submit its differences
to an impartial judicial determination is unwilling to subject them
to this kind of diplomatic process. If there could be a tribunal which
would pass upon questions between nations with the same impartial
and impersonal judgment that the Supreme Court of the United
States gives to questions arising between citizens of the different
States, or between foreign citizens and the citizens of the United
States, there can be no doubt that nations would be much more ready
to submit their controversies to its decision than they are now to
take the chances of arbitration. It should be your effort to bring
about in the Second Conference a development of The Hague Tribunal
into a permanent tribunal composed of judges who are judicial officers
and nothing else, who are paid adequate salaries, who have no other
occupation, and who will devote their entire time to the trial and
decision of international causes by judicial methods and under a
sense of judicial responsibility. These judges should be so selected
from the different countries that the different systems of law and
procedure aud the principal languages shall be fairly represented.
The court should be made of such dignity, consideration and rank
that the best and ablest jurist will accept appointment to it, and
that the whole world will have absolute confidence in its judg-
ments. .. .
6. You will maintain the traditional policy of the United States
regarding the immunity of private property of belligerents at sea... .
7. Since the code of rules for the government of military operations
on land was adopted by the First Peace Conference there have been
occasions for its application under very severe conditions, notably
in the South African war and the war between Japan and Russia.
Doubtless the Powers involved in those conflicts have had occasion
to observe many particulars in which useful additions or improvements
might be made. You will consider their suggestions with a view to
208 Plans for World Peace [1907
reducing, so far as is practicable, the evils of war and protecting the
rights of neutrals. . . .
8. The clause of the program relating to the rights and duties of
neutrals is of very great importance and in itself would furnish matter
for useful discussion sufficient to occupy the time and justify the
labors of the Conference.
The various subjects which the Conference may be called upon to
consider are likely to bring out proposals which should be considered
in their relation to each other, as standing in the following order of
substantial importance:
(1) Provisions tending to prevent disagreements between nations.
(2) Provisions tending to dispose of disagreements without war.
(3) Provisions tending to preserve the rights and interests of
neutrals.
(4) Provisions tending to mitigate the evils of war to belligerents.
The relative importance of these classes of provisions should always
be kept in mind. No rules should be adopted for the purpose of
mitigating the evils of war to belligerents which will tend strongly
to destroy the rights of neutrals, and no rules should be adopted
regarding the rights of neutrals which will tend strongly to bring about
war. It is of the highest importance that not only the rights, but
the duties of neutrals shall be most clearly and distinctly defined
and understood, not only because the evils which belligerent nations
bring upon themselves ought not to be allowed to spread to their
peaceful neighbors and inflict unnecessary injury upon the rest of
mankind, but because misunderstandings regarding the rights and
duties of neutrals constantly tend to involve them in controversy
with one or the other belligerent.
For both of these reasons, special consideration should be given to
an agreement upon what shall be deemed to constitute contraband
of war. .. . You should do all in your power to bring about an
agreement upon what is to constitute contraband; and it is very
desirable that the list should be limited as narrowly as possible. . . .
Following the precedent established by the commission to the
First Conference, all your reports and communications to this Govern-
ment will be made to the Department of State for proper consideration
and eventual preservation in the archives. The records of your
commission will be kept by your secretary, Mr. Chandler Hale.
No. 52] Results of the Hague Convention 200
Should you be in doubt at any time regarding the meaning or effect
of these instructions, or should you consider at any time that there
is occasion for special instructions, you will communicate freely, with
the Department of State by telegraph. It is the President’s earnest
wish that you may contribute materially to the effective work of
the Conference and that its deliberations may result in making
national justice more certain and international peace more secure.
I am, gentlemen, your obedient servant,
Ermu Roor.
Instructions to the American Delegates to The Hague Conferences [World Peace
Foundation Pamphlet Series, Vol. III, No. 4], 13-27 passim.
52. Results of the Hague Convention (1914)
BY DENYS P. MYERS
Myers was Secretary of the World Peace Foundation, and possesses an excep-
tionally broad fund of information on matters related to the promotion of interna-
tional peace.—Bibliography as in No. 51 above.
HE greater bulk of the international statute law written at
The Hague has dealt with the prospect of war or its conduct.
This is not surprising, since that abnormal condition of the modern
state must, by reason of its abnormality, be more clearly limited
and defined than the condition of peace, in which problems are far
more diverse and usually not of equally critical character. The
Third Conference—if it takes place under conditions similar to its
predecessors and is not superseded by a closer international federa-
tive body—will inevitably make additions to the statute law of war,
and for the first time will probably take long steps toward codifying
the regulation of peaceful relations between nations.
It is the Hague Convention for the Pacific Settlement of Inter-
national Disputes which has been most in the public eye and by
which the work at The Hague has been publicly judged. This Con-
vention consists of four constructive parts relating to the maintenance
of general peace, good offices and mediation, international commis-
210 Plans for World Peace [1914
sions of inquiry, and international arbitration. The extent to which
these methods have been used is the test of the Convention. The first
part is declaratory that “the contracting powers agree to use their
best efforts to insure the pacific settlement of international differ-
ences.” The part referring to good offices and mediation relates to
the proffering of assistance by a third party respecting differences
between two states. It is provided that “the exercise of this right
can never be regarded by either of the parties in dispute as an un-
friendly act.” The provisions of this part have found their applica-
tion since 1899 in many instances of international strained feeling.
The mediation of the United States in Central and South America
has several times resulted in smoothing over serious difficulties;
and at a more recent period the European powers were acting as
mediators under this convention throughout almost the whole course
of the Turko-Italian War and throughout all of the Turko-Balkan
and Inter-Balkan conflicts. It is generally accepted in diplomatic
circles that this mediation facilitated peace negotiations and hastened
their conclusion. The success of mediation by Brazil, Argentina, and
Chile in the Mexican difficulty in the spring of 1914, saving the United
States from a threatened war, is perhaps in itself a complete justifica-
tion of this part of the Convention. The European war came about
only after the failure of several mediation proposals and had hardly
begun before President Wilson had tendered his good offices.
The part referring to international commissions of inquiry was
intended to set up machinery “to facilitate a solution of disputes by
elucidating the facts by means of an impartial and conscientious
investigation.” It is not intended to pass on the quality of facts and
actions, but simply to determine what actually occurred. Twice this
machinery has been availed of, both times successfully. The cases
are tabulated in an accompanying table [not reprinted here], the
historical details being as follows:
1. The Russian fleet, Admiral Rozhdestvensky, on the way to the
Far East, suspected the presence of Japanese war vessels in the North
Sea and on October 22, 1904, fired by mistake on the English fleet of
Hull trawler fishermen. Two men were killed, six wounded, the
Crane sunk and five trawlers damaged. On November 25, 1904, it was
agreed to refer the incident to a commission for report. The commis-
sion met at Paris and in February, 1905, the report was made. As
No. 52] Results of the Hague Convention 23r
a result of the facts established by it, Russia voluntarily paid to Great
Britain about $300,000 as damages.
2. On January 25, 1912, during the Turko-Italian War, the French
steamer Tavignano was seized by the Italian torpedo boat Fulmine in
the roads of Raz Zira. On the same day and in the same roads the
Italian torpedo boat Canopo fired on the Tunisian mahones Kamouna
and Gaulois. Accounts of the circumstances surrounding these inci-
dents were so at variance that France and Italy could reach no deci-
sion upon them and by agreement of April 15, 1912, the incidents
were referred to a commission for investigation and report. The
commission reported on July 23, 1912, and the report was ac-
cepted ar
The part of the Convention referring to international arbitration
is the one most generally known. It provides for arbitration at The
Hague, establishes technical rules therefor, provides a bureau cor-
responding to the familiar office of clerk of court, and lays down general
rules for the selection of judges. Choice of arbitrators is now rather
clumsy, and the American project for a Judicial Arbitral Court
brought up at the Second Conference was designed to remedy this
by providing a court holding regular sessions. At present “each
contracting power selects four persons at the most, of known com-
petency in questions of international law, of the highest moral reputa-
tion, and disposed to accept the duties of arbitrator.” These persons
form the so-called Permanent Court, in reality a panel of judges.
When states have a question to arbitrate the arbitrators are chosen
from the list of this panel, three or five members being named by
a method previously agreed upon. One is designated president, and
the court so constituted hears the case and renders the decision. The
court was declared formed by a note of the Dutch Minister of Foreign
Affairs of April 9, 1901, a little more than thirteen years ago. From
that date to May 22, 1902, it awaited business. From then until the
present time business has always been pending before the court in
some stage, except the period from August 8, 1905, to March 14,
1908.
An accompanying table [not reprinted here], shows the details of
the cases heard by the court, but as that table is official it does not
indicate the results. It is therefore of interest to state the character
of the awards:
212 Plans for World Peace f1914
1. United States vs. Mexico regarding Pius funds of the Californias;
decision rendered, October 14, 1902; award of $1,420, 682.67 (Mexican)
to United States.
2. Germany, Great Britain and Italy vs. Venezuela (Belgium,
Spain, United States, France, Mexico, Netherlands, and Sweden and
Norway associated with defendant) regarding right of preference
claimed by blockading powers; decision rendered, February 22, 1904;
award favored plaintiffs’ right of preference for payment of claims
as being blockading powers.
3. Germany, France and Great Britain vs. Japan regarding per-
petual leases in Japan; decision rendered, May 22, 1905; favorable
to plaintiffs, who secured exemption from taxation of structures on
perpetually leased land.
4. France vs. Great Britain regarding dhows of Mascat; decision
rendered, August 8, 1905; held that only Mascat natives enjoying
French protection by treaty were entitled to fly the French flag.
5. Germany vs. France regarding deserters of Casablanca; decision
rendered, May 22, 1909; held, in detail, that German consular officers
erroneously aided deserters from the French Foreign Legion and that
French military authorities erroneously failed to respect the protection
granted to the deserters.
6. Norway vs. Sweden regarding maritime frontier; decision ren-
dered, October 23, 1909; boundary line traced by the Court.
7. United States vs. Great Britain regarding North Atlantic Coast
fisheries; decision rendered, September 7, 1910, decision detailed,
equitably apportioning rights of parties under treaty of 1818.
8. United States vs. Venezuela regarding claims of the Orinoco
Company; decision rendered, October 25, 1910; held that the awards
against Venezuela by an umpire were void, that the claims were
founded, and, in addition to the sums allowed by the earlier award,
allowed the United States sums of $19,200, $1,053, $28,845.20 and
$769.22 on the four points reviewed, with interest at 3 per cent.
9. France vs. Great Britain regarding the arrest and restitution of
Savarkar; decision rendered, February 24, 1911; held that the British
Government was not required to restore Savarkar to the French
Government, to whose jurisdiction he had escaped from imprisonment
on a British ship in a French harbor.
to. Italy vs. Peru regarding the claim of Canevaro Brothers;
No. 52] Results of the Hague Convention 213
decision rendered, May 3, 1912; held that Peru should pay the
Canevaros £39,811 8s. 1d. in Peruvian bonds on the claim and
£0,388 17s. 1d. in gold as interest from January 1, 1889, to July 31,
TORA
11. Russia vs. Turkey regarding arrears of interest claimed for
Russian indemnitaries for damages sustained during the war of 1877;
decision rendered, November 11, 1912; held that Turkey was not
required to pay Russia damages for failing to pay interest on the
Russian claims.
12. France vs. Italy regarding seizure of the Manouba; decision
rendered, May 6, 1913; award sustained Italian right of temporary
seizure of ship and arrest of Turkish (belligerent) passengers and
awarded France 4,000 francs for losses and damages proved.
13. France vs. Italy regarding seizure of the Carthage; decision
rendered, May 6, 1913; award denied belligerent’s (Italy’s) right to
seize a mail steamer temporarily and awarded France 160,000 francs
for losses and damages proved.
14. France vs. Italy regarding seizure of the Tavignano and cannon
shots fired at the Tunisian mahones Kamouna and Gaulois; litigants
agreed after court convened to settle affairs directly.
15. Netherlands vs. Portugal regarding the Dutch-Portuguese fron-
tiers in the island of Timor; decision rendered, August, 1914; award
favored the contention of the Netherlands.
16. Spain, France, and Great Britain vs. Portugal regarding seizure
of religious property in Portugal; decision pending.
17. Italy vs. Austria-Hungary regarding responsibility for loss of
two fishing vessels by Austro-Hungarian submarine automatic contact
mines defective in mechanism; submission agreed upon.
Denys P. Myers, The Record of The Hague [World Peace Foundation Pamphlet
Series, Vol. IV, No. 6, Part III], 6-10.
214 Plans for World Peace [191E
53. A League to Enforce Peace (1915)
BY PRESIDENT A. LAWRENCE LOWELL
Lowell, after service as Professor of Government at Harvard, was elected Presi-
dent of the University in 1909. He is an authority of international standing in his
field. See also Nos. 201-204.—Bibliography as in No. 51 above.
N spite of its ominous sound, the suggestion of a league of nations
to enforce peace has no connection with any effort to stop the pres-
ent war. It is aimed solely at preventing future conflicts after the
terrific struggle now raging has come to an end; and yet this is not a
bad time for people in private life to bring forward proposals of such
a nature. Owing to the vast number of soldiers under arms, to the
proportion of men and women in the warring countries who suffer
acutely, to the extent of the devastation and misery, it is probable
that, whatever the result may be, the people of all nations will be
more anxious to prevent the outbreak of another war than ever be-
fore in the history of the world. The time is not yet ripe for govern-
ments to take action, but it is ripe for public discussion of practicable
means to reduce the danger of future breaches of international peace.
The nations of the world to-day are in much the position of fron-
tier settlements in America half a century ago, before orderly govern-
ment was set up. The men there were in the main well disposed, but
in the absence of an authority that could enforce order each man,
feeling no other security from attack, carried arms which he was pre-
pared to use if danger threatened. The first step, when affrays became
unbearable, was the formation of a vigilance committee, supported
by the enrollment of all good citizens, to prevent men from shooting
one another and to punish offenders. People did not wait for a grad-
ual improvement by the preaching of higher ethics and a better civ-
ilization. They felt that violence must be met by force, and, when
the show of force was strong enough, violence ceased. In time the
vigilance committee was replaced by the policeman and by the sheriff
with the posse comitatus. The policeman and the sheriff maintain
order because they have the bulk of the community behind them,
and no country has yet reached, or is likely for an indefinite period
to reach, such a state of civilization that it can wholly dispense with
the police.
No. 53] A League to Enforce Peace 215
Treaties for the arbitration of international disputes are good. They
have proved an effective method of settling questions that would
otherwise have bred ill-feeling without directly causing war; but when
passion runs high, and deep-rooted interests or sentiments are at stake,
there is need of the sheriff with his posse to enforce the obligation.
There are, no doubt, differences in the conception of justice and right,
divergencies of civilization, so profound that people will fight over
them, and face even the prospect of disaster in war rather than sub-
mit. Yet even in such cases it is worth while to postpone the conflict,
to have a public discussion of the question at issue before an impartial
tribunal, and thus give to the people of the countries involved a chance
to consider, before hostilities begin, whether the risk and suffering
of war is really worth while. No sensible man expects to abolish
wars altogether, but we ought to seek to reduce the probability of war
as much as possible. It is on these grounds that the suggestion has
been put forth of a league of nations to enforce peace.
Without attempting to cover details of operation, which are, in-
deed, of vital importance and will require careful study by experts
in international law and diplomacy, the proposal contains four points
stated as general objects. The first is that before resorting to arms
the members of the league shall submit disputes with one another,
if justiciable, to an international tribunal; second, that in like manner
they shall submit non-justiciable questions (that is such as cannot be
decided on the basis of strict international law) to an international
council of conciliation, which shall recommend a fair and amicable
solution; third, that if any member of the league wages war against
another before submitting the question in dispute to the tribunal or
council, all the other members shall jointly use forthwith both their
economic and military forces against the state that so breaks the
peace; and, fourth, that the signatory powers shall endeavor to cod-
ify and improve the rules of international law.
The kernel of the proposal, the feature in which it differs from other
plans, lies in the third point, obliging all the members of the league
to declare war on any member violating the pact of peace. This is
the provision that provokes both adherence and opposition; and at
first it certainly gives one a shock that a people should be asked to
pledge itself to go to war over a quarrel which is not of its making,
in which it has no interest, and in which it may believe that sub-
216 Plans for World Peace [1915
stantial justice lies on the other side. If, indeed, the nations of the
earth could maintain complete isolation, could pursue each its own
destiny without regard to the rest, if they were not affected by a war
between two others or liable to be drawn into it; if, in short, there
were no overwhelming common interest in securing universal peace,
the provision would be intolerable. It would be as bad as the
liability of an individual to take part in the posse comitatus of a com-
munity with which he had nothing in common. But in every civi-
lized country the public force is employed to prevent any man, how-
ever just his claim, from vindicating his own right with his own hand
instead of going to law; and every citizen is bound, when needed, to
assist in preventing him, because that is the only way to restrain
private war, and the maintenance of order is of paramount importance
for every one. Surely the family of nations has a like interest in re-
straining war between states. . .
What is true of this country is true of others. To agree to abide
by the result of an arbitration, on every non-justiciable question of
every nature whatsoever, on pain of compulsion in any form by the
whole world, would involve a greater cession of sovereignty than
nations would now be willing to concede. This appears, indeed, per-
fectly clearly from the discussions at the Hague Conference of 1907.
But to exclude differences that do not turn on questions of interna-
tional law from the cases where a state must present the matter to a
tribunal or council of conciliation before beginning hostilities, would
leave very little check upon the outbreak of war. Almost every
conflict between European nations for more than half a century has
been based upon some dissension which could not be decided by strict
rules of law, and in which a violation of international law or of treaty
rights has usually not even been used as an excuse. . . .
No one will claim that a league to enforce peace, such as is pro-
posed, would wholly prevent war, but it would greatly reduce the
probability of hostilities. It would take away the advantage of sur-
prise, of catching the enemy unprepared for a sudden attack. It
would give a chance for public opinion on the nature of the contro-
versy to be formed throughout the world and in the militant country.
The latter is of great importance, for the moment war is declared
argument about its merits is at once stifled. Passion runs too high
for calm debate, and patriotism forces people to support their govern-
No. 53] A League to Enforce Peace Dy
ment. But a trial before an international tribunal would give time
for discussion while emotion is not yet highly inflamed. Men opposed
to war would be able to urge its injustice, to ask whether, after all,
the object is worth sacrifice, and they would get a hearing from their
fellow citizens which they cannot get after war begins. The mere
delay, the interval for consideration, would be an immense gain for
the prospect of a peaceful settlement. . . .
A suggestion more commonly made is that the members of the
league of nations, instead of pledging themselves to use their military
forces forthwith against any of their number that commits a breach
of the peace, should agree to hold at once a conference, and take such
measures—diplomatic, economic, or military—as may be necessary
to prevent war. The objection to this is that it weakens very seri-
ously the sanction. Conferences are apt to shrink from decisive
ACHON. anz
A conference is an excellent thing. The proposal of a league to
enforce peace by no means excludes it; but the important matter,
the effective principle, is that every member of the league should
know that whether a conference meets or not, or whatever action it
may take or fail to take, all the members of the league have pledged
themselves to declare war forthwith on any member that commits
a breach of the peace before submitting its case to the international
tribunal or council of conciliation. Such a pledge, and such a pledge
alone, can have the strong deterrent influence, and thus furnish the
sanction, that is needed. Of course the pledge may not be kept. Like
other treaties it may be broken by the parties to it. Nations are
composed of human beings with human weaknesses, and one of these
is a disinclination to perform an agreement when it involves a sacrifice.
Nevertheless, nations, like men, often do have enough sense of honor,
of duty, or of ultimate self-interest to carry out their contracts at no
little immediate sacrifice. They are certainly more likely to do a
thing if they have pledged themselves to it than if they have not;
and any nation would be running a terrible risk that went to war in
the hope that the other members of the league would break their
edges. cc.
There are many agreements in private business which are not easy
to embody in formal contracts; agreements where, as in this case,
the execution of the terms calls for immediate action, and where
218 Plans for World Peace [r915
redress after an elaborate trial of the facts affords no real reparation.
But, if the object sought is good, men do not condemn it on account
of the difficulty in devising provisions that will accomplish the result
desired; certainly not until they have tried to devise them. It may,
indeed, prove impossible to draft a code of specific acts that will cover
the ground; it may be impracticable to draft it so as to avoid issues
of fact that can be determined only after a long sifting of evidence
which would come too late; but surely that is no reason for failure to
make the attempt. We are not making a treaty among nations. We
are merely putting forward a suggestion for reducing war which seems
to merit consideration.
A second difficulty that will sometimes arise is the rule of conduct
to be followed pending the presentation of the question to the inter-
national tribunal. The continuance or cessation of the acts com-
plained of may appear to be, and may even be in fact, more important
than the final decision. This has been brought to our attention
forcibly by the sinking of the Lusitania. We should have no objec-
tion to submitting to arbitration the question of the right of sub-
marines to torpedo merchant ships without warning, provided Ger-
many abandoned the practice pending the arbitration; and Germany
would probably have no objection to submitting the question to a
tribunal on the understanding that the practice was to continue
until the decision was rendered, because by that time the war would
be over. This difficulty is inherent in every plan for the arbitration
of international disputes, although more serious in a league whose
members bind themselves to prevent by force the outbreak of war.
It would be necessary to give the tribunal summary authority to
decree a modus vivendi, to empower it, like a court of equity, to issue
a temporary injunction.
In short, the proposal for a league to enforce peace cannot meet all
possible contingencies. It cannot prevent all future wars, nor does
any sensible person believe that any plan can do so in the present state
of civilization. But it can prevent some wars that would otherwise
take place, and, if it does that, it will have done much good.
A. Lawrence Lowell, in Atlantic Monthly, September, 1915 (Boston, 1915), 5-18
passim.
CHAPTER XI— THE NATIONAL DEFENCE
54. Fortify the Panama Canal (1911)
BY REAR-ADMIRAL A. T. MAHAN
Admiral Mahan (1840-1914) was a naval officer and achieved great distinction
as a writer of naval history. His suggestions in his famous books on the influence
of sea power upon history, and upon the French Revolution and Empire (1890 and
1892), caused a change in the naval policies of the United States, Great Britain, and
Germany.—For the Panama Canal, see No. 39 above.
N approaching the question of fortifying the Panama Canal, it is
. well to remember at once that the Canal Zone, with the qualified
exceptions of the cities of Colon and Panama, is United States terri-
tory. In the treaty of cession there is a clause providing for the
extradition of offenders between the Zone and the Republic of Panama.
Being, therefore, territory rather than property, to ask guarantees
of neutrality from foreign states is to constitute over ourselves a kind
of protectorate. It would also contravene our traditional policies,
by inviting the participation of non-American states in the assuring of
American conditions; a lapse the more marked when it is remembered
that the Zone has become ours by acquisition from another American
commonwealth. How grievously the nation resented co-partnership
in the affairs of the Isthmus is testified by the whole history of the
Clayton-Bulwer Treaty; a resentment which verged so closely on
bitterness during the final twenty years of the discussion as to be a
warning against any reconstitution of similar conditions. We should
have perpetual discussions with foreign nations about American
affairs; such as have enlivened and not sweetened much of Great
Britain’s occupancy of Egypt.
It is also to be remembered that, besides being American soil, the
Panama Canal Zone cannot be looked upon as an isolated position
such as the Philippines. The loss of the Philippines by war, as a
material result, would be to us like the loss of a little finger, perhaps
of a single joint of it. The Philippines to us are less a property than
210
220 The National Defence [1914
a charge. The Canal Zone, on the contrary, must be regarded in its
geographical and military relations—the two adjectives are in this
connection almost identical—to the United States as a whole and to
other specific American stations. .
Upon the general question of seacoast fortification, as distinct from
the special question of fortifying the Panama Canal, the reasons why
fortification is an essential complement of a navy are twofold. Sea-
coast fortification supplies a navy with fortified bases, strictly anal-
ogous to the fortresses, or temporarily fortified positions, which are
the home or the advanced bases of an army in campaign. To argue
the advantage—nay, the need—of these would be to discuss military
art from its foundation. It is sufficient to say that all military history
testifies to it. One of the most distinguished of the opponents of the
first Napoleon said: “An army which has to insure the protection of
unfortified bases is crippled in all its movements.” In a naval cam-
paign the navy is the mobile army—in the field. It, too, requires
bases concerning the security of which it need feel no apprehension.
The second office of seacoast fortification is that of simple protec-
tion. It is gravely argued that, because a recent international stipula-
tion provides that unfortified seaports shall not be bombarded,
therefore protection is unnecessary and even inexpedient.... An
undefended neutrality of the Canal Zone would forbid an enemy’s
bombarding; but it would not deter his occupation, if at war with
the United States, because the position is too valuable not to be
secured, if possible.
To apply these general considerations to the specific case of the
Panama Canal. What will be the value of the Canal to the United
States, and, incidentally, to the United States Navy? Primarily,
and above all, it will be the most important link in the line of com-
munications between our Atlantic and Pacific coasts. There is.
throughout the whole length and extension of our seacoast, from
Maine to Puget Sound, no single position or reach of water com-
parable to Panama in this respect. Communications, the free access
of an army to its source of supplies,—or rather the free passage of
supplies to it,—and the ability of one part of the army to reach the
other for material support, or of the whole to move to any particular
point of a theatre of war—communications, in this sense, are the most
important factor in war. Communications dominate war in all its
No. 54] Fortify the Panama Canal 221
aspects. On a battle-field the connection of the several divisions of
an army must be such that an enemy cannot break through. Advanc-
ing in campaign, the relations of army corps to each other must be
such that they can unite before the enemy attacks either in force.
Concentration, of which we hear so much and so justly, means simply
communications so preserved as to enable the whole to live and the
parts to unite betimes. .. .
The question of fortifying the Canal, therefore, is the question of
preserving an essential line of naval communications. But, it will be
replied, you beg the question; the navy will protect its own com-
munications, the Canal not least. Will, then, the navy be tied to the
Canal, or will it protect it by a big detachment, by dividing its num-
bers while the bulk of the fleet goes to some other assigned duty?
Yes, it is replied, the money spent for fortifications, which are im-
mobile, will be given to ships, which, though mobile, will remain for
defence of the Canal and yet, if required, can go to reinforce the
fleet. Just so; if required, they will go away. One advantage of forti-
fications is that, being established in moments of calm consideration,
they cannot be moved in moments of real or panicky pressure. .
It is often argued that, because an enemy intending the invasion
of a country situated as the United States is must primarily possess
a competent navy, therefore, the best defence against invasion on
either large or small scale is a mobile navy. This is perfectly true,
and applies with equal or greater force to the maintenance of oversea
dependencies, such as Hawaii, Guantanamo and the Canal Zone. A
navy at least equal to the enemy’s is essential to their preservation,
but it does not follow that the navy must be immediately present at
either or all. A navy does not protect by local presence, but by ac-
tion upon the lines of communication; that is, upon the sea. Hence
fallacy enters with the further assertion that all money spent on for-
tifications had better be spent on ships. The question is one of pro-
portion. Coast fortification may be pushed, at times has been pushed,
to an extravagant extent. But for the defence of points, the tenure
of which is essential to military operations,—the operations of a fleet,—
fixed works are better than floating because they secure the same
aggregate gun defence at much less cost; or, if you prefer it so stated,
much greater defensive strength for the same cost. In addition to the
fact that they cannot be moved under popular apprehension,—such
222 The National Defence [1912
as kept the Flying Squadron in Hampton Roads during the war with
Spain, a measure which would have cost the country dear with a
more active enemy,—guns in forts cost far less, under normal condi-
tions, than those in ships. Forts need no floating power, no motive
machinery, no long storage of fuel. Moreover, they are less vulner-
able; for the solidity of the ground permits the accumulation of armor
or other protective covering, and they have not to dread the sub-
marine or the floating-mine.
Guns on ships are also necessarily massed within the length of the
ship, presenting a concentrated target, whereas on shore they may
be dispersed indefinitely, and largely concealed, which is the modern
practice. For such reasons, while vessels have usually been able to
run by forts through an unobstructed channel, the same amount of
artillery in ships has rarely been able to stand up against forts. Even
with superior fire, ships have been able to dominate land-works
only under peculiar conditions, which the all-big-gun ship does not
possess; the conditions of very rapid fire from very numerous pieces
at very close range. No one is going to take a ten-million-dollar
battleship over an unexplored mine-field to get near the same number
of guns ashore; nor will it be attempted to engage at a distance,
because the ship is so much more open to fatal injury by a chance
shotini
Granting, then, that the United States intends to make sure of the
use of the Canal in war, fortification will insure that peculiar end more
cheaply, with less danger of losing the position, than the same amount
of money expended in war-ships, unless there are abnormal peculiarities
of the ground of which I not have heard. Itis to be taken for granted
that the Board of Fortification, checked as it should be by a naval
representation, will not pile Ossa on Pelion in needless multiplication
of defences, but will have a due regard to the fundamental fact that
the defences exist for the Canal, and not the Canal for the sake of
being defended. That is, it will be remembered that from the broad
military point of view, which includes the entire military establish-
ment of the country as a composite whole—army, navy, coast de-
fence—the value of the Canal is not its impregnability as a position,
but its usefulness to the navy as the offensive defender of the whole
national coast-line—Atlantic, Gulf and Pacific.
A. T. Mahan. in North American Review (New York, 1911), CXCIII, 331-336
No. 55] The Light Cavalry of the Seas 223
55. The Light Cavalry of the Seas (1914)
BY LIEUTENANT-COMMANDER D. PRATT MANNIX
Lieutenant-Commander Mannix (still serving, 1928, with a destroyer squadron) is
distinguished as the first American to duplicate Leander’s historic feat of swimming
the Hellespont.—See also, on the convoy work of destroyers in the World War,
No. 189 below.
HE torpedo flotilla of the Atlantic fleet as now organized con-
sists of twenty-five destroyers divided into five divisions of
five boats each. Their duties are almost precisely the same as those
performed by the cavalry of a land army. Just as the mounted men
are the “eyes of the army” so are the destroyers the “eyes of the
fleet.”
The general characteristics of these vessels are as follows: length,
300 feet; beam, 26 feet; displacement, 850 tons. They draw about
ten feet of water, and each boat carries four officers and a hundred
men. Their armament consists of three double torpedo tubes and
five semi-automatic three-inch guns. Armor protection they have
none, depending on their high speed (about thirty knots or thirty-
four statute miles an hour) and the fact that most of their work is
done at night.
As the name implies, torpedo-boat destroyers were originally built
to combat the smaller torpedo-boat, which had become such a serious
menace to the battle-ships and large cruisers that search-lights and
rapid-fire guns could not be depended upon for protection. Gradually,
however, the duties of the destroyer were extended until they in-
cluded all that was formerly done by the torpedo-boat and much
besides. The mere fact that a modern destroyer is three or four
times as large as one of the earlier boats renders it so much more sea-
worthy and capable of carrying so much more fuel that the radius of
action of torpedo-craft has been enormously increased, and they have
become more and more dangerous to an enemy’s fleet.
The duties of the modern flotilla may be tabulated in this way:
(1) Scouting. This comprises locating and reporting the position
of the enemy and keeping in touch with him as long as may be nec-
essary.
(2) Protection of one’s own fleet from night attacks of the enemy’s
224 The National Defence [1914
destroyers. This includes not only locating and reporting the posi-
tion of the hostile torpedo-craft, but, if necessary, attacking them
with your guns and sinking or driving them away before they can
force home an attack against your battle-ships.
(3) Attacking the battle-ships of the enemy with your torpedoes.
This is, of course, the paramount duty of every vessel in the flotilla.
(4) In addition to the above “regular” duties, destroyers are fre-
quently used in what might be called “gunboat work”; patrolling
the enemy’s coast; running up his rivers where the big ships cannot
go; overtaking and capturing his merchant-vessels and firing on troops
and field-batteries ashore. In the recent Turco-Italian War, although
the Turkish navy remained at anchor most of the time, the Italian
destroyers were constantly engaged, blockading, landing troops, and
even attacking fortified towns.
In scouting, many different systems may be used. Most of these
are confidential and cannot be divulged, but a general idea of the
problem that confronts the flotilla may readily be given. Suppose a
hostile fleet is making preparations to leave Europe, with the evident
intention of attacking some point on our coast-line, or, as would be
more probable, of seizing some island in the West Indies, establishing
a base there, and directing operations against either the Panama
Canal or the mainland. As long as that fleet is in or near Europe we
can follow its movements from day to day. That is what our diplo-
matic agents and secret-service men are for, and they would cable,
in cipher of course, detailed reports, not only of the fleet’s location
but of the number and types of vessels comprising it, the amount
of ammunition and provisions on board, the state of discipline of the
crews, and everything that could possibly be of assistance to us in
preparing to defend ourselves.
Now, suppose the hostile fleet weigh their anchors, and, steaming
past the rock of Gibraltar, head out to sea. In a few hours they are
out of sight; they can steer any course they wish and travel at any
rate of speed up to their maximum. It will not be many days before
the people of our country will be asking themselves: “Where are
they? When will they appear off our coasts, and what will be their
first point of attack? ”
We have certain facts to help us. No modern ship can keep the
seas for months at a time as did the fleets of a hundred years ago.
No. 55] The Light Cavalry of the Seas 225
They must coal. We know the coal capacity and also, roughly, the
coal-consumption at various speeds of all foreign war-ships just as
they know ours. Hence we are certain that after a comparatively
short time at sea the enemy must put in somewhere to fill his bunkers.
If, however, they take their colliers with them, as a large fleet would
undoubtedly do, even this becomes uncertain, as it is not impossible,
in smooth weather, to coal at sea. Should such a force evade our
battle-ships and effect a landing either in the West Indies or on the
mainland they might do untold damage before they were overcome
and their ships destroyed. Most of the school histories carefully slur
over the fact that a few thousand British soldiers and sailors, under
General Ross and Admiral Cockburn, marched to Washington,
burned the national capitol, and escaped to their ships with trifling
losses.
It is the destroyers’ duty to locate the enemy as soon as possible
and notify our fleet of dreadnaughts so that they can attack before
he succeeds in landing his forces. His position, within certain wide
limits of latitude and longitude, can generally be established by re-
ports from merchant-ships who have seen him and ports where he
has stopped for coal or repairs. This gives us a “scouting area,”
which the flotilla must carefully patrol by day and night.
The simplest type of such a patrol is to form the boats in a line with
wide interv2ls between them, just as a skirmish-line is formed ashore.
These intervals should be as large as possible, but not so great that
an enemy’s vessel could slip through without being seen by at least
one of the destroyers. On a clear day they might be twenty miles
apart; a division of five could then cover a hundred miles of the ocean.
The boats being in position, at a certain hour previously designated
they start steaming toward the enemy, all making exactly the same
speed in order to keep their proper station or “dress” in the scouting-
line. Lookouts on the bridges carefully watch for any sign of smoke
on the horizon, which is usually the first indication of the presence of
a stranger. Anything seen must immediately be investigated, and,
if necessary, reported by wireless to the battle-ships either directly
or, if they be far distant, through a chain of vessels which relay the
message along until it reaches the admiral. Should the stranger be
harmless he is allowed to proceed, but if he prove to be one of the
enemy’s sceuts, his location is at once sent broadcast by the wireless
226 The National Defence [1916
of the destroyer discovering him, and every effort is made to find the
hostile battle-ships, which are probably not far from their scout.
When contact is made with the big ships a general wireless call is
sent out for all destroyers to assemble in that vicinity. Here they
wait, taking advantage of their superior speed to keep just outside
the range of the big guns, until night falls, when they may either at-
tack or continue “tracking” the enemy, being careful not to lose
touch for a moment and sending repeated reports to their admiral
of what he is doing.
Of course, the hostile fleet will make every effort to keep these re-
ports from getting through by “interfering” with their own wireless,
and the best method of avoiding this interference is being constantly
studied by all navies.
D. Pratt Mannix, The Light Cavalry of the Seas in Scribner's, May, 1914 (New
York), 573-583-
56. Mobilization “Blunders” (1916)
FROM THE LITERARY DIGEST
This article attempts to reflect newspaper opinion of the National Guard mobili-
zation for Mexican border service. Parenthetical abbreviations following newspaper
names indicate editorial adherence to one or another of the leading political faiths.
—Bibliography as in No. 40 above; see also Roger Batchelder, Watching and Wait-
ing on the Border.
T is within “neither the possibilities nor the space of one news-
paper,” remarks the Buffalo News (Rep.), to record the deficiencies
that followed the President’s call of the National Guard for service on
the Mexican border. ‘‘Regiments with uniforms for only a third of
their membership, armories without reserve supplies of any kind,
batteries without guns, troops without horses, rifles but no cartridges,
food but no cooking outfits, tents but no blankets”; “if there had been
any worse way to handle the mobilization of the National Guard,”
concludes the Newark Star-Eagle (Ind.); “ or any better way to expose
the national unfitness for war, the people in authority would have
hastened, one suspects, to adopt it.” .. .
No. 56] Mobilization “Blunders” 227
“On every side,” according to the Boston Transcript (Rep.), “ap-
pear evidences of our unpreparedness that prove every charge of in-
competency brought against the executive and legislative branches
of the Government, which have ignored the lessons of the European
War.” The mobilization was “far too slow and awkward,” in the
opinion of the New York Tribune (Rep.). The spirit and the collec-
tive reliability of the men are acknowledged by the Boston News
Bureau (Ind.), as by many another critic, “but the machine, when
tested, worked badly.”
“The physical discomforts visited on the men in delays, the lack
of supplies, including food, and in inadequate accommodations are
the fruits. State mobilizing-points were proved not equal to the un-
loading strain. The sudden call upon railroad facilities, in the midst
of a busy traffic season, could not by any skill be perfectly met.
“But there are some still bigger symptoms. Two in particular
point their own moral. One is the demonstration that neither an
army nor the means of equipping and moving it can be improvised.
The other is that a nation, for proper defense, needs a unified national
control of its forces.” .
But when we turn from the general criticism of the National Guard
mobilization to the concrete instances of inefficiency, we find the
critics promptly answered and their allegations circumstantially de-
nied. Take the matter of hardships en-route to Mexico. “Our boys
may never get into a battle,” remarked the Philadelphia Press (Rep.),
“but they will have a story of hardship, discomfort, and even suffering
to relate on their return because of the negligent and unscientific
method of their transportation.” In the first place, as the Buffalo
News (Rep.) puts it, we “sent 2,000 of our best young men away in
the past month in cars that the European immigrants would decline
with scorn.” And then the “failure of the authorities to provide
ample food for the militiamen on their long trip to the Mexican bor-
der” was characterized as “disgraceful” by the Brooklyn Standard
Union (Rep.). This refers to the stories of hungry Guardsmen raiding
lunch-rooms and provision shops in Erie, Cleveland, and Kansas
City. The Philadelphia Record (Dem.) suspects there is political
animus in these stories and the charges founded on them. It calls
attention to a letter sent to the Associated Press by the men of the
69th New York, one of the “starving regiments,” stating that “our
228 The National Defence [1916
meals are being served to us regularly and in a sufficient quantity to
satisfy our appetites.” A General Staff officer in Washington was
quoted by the New York Tribune as saying:
“The Guardsmen have got to learn to take care of themselves. . . .
Any units that have run short of food on the five-day trip to the bor-
der have themselves to blame, as their supply was sufficient for ten
days.
ae for the complaint that men had to travel in day coaches, we
had to take what we could get at the outset. Troops were needed to
stop the gaps in our border patrol,—and we couldn’t get enough
tourist sleepers.”
The Boston Transcript (Rep.) and the Minneapolis Tribune point
to the great advance made in camp sanitation since the days of the
Chickamauga camp. The New Orleans Times-Picayune (Dem.) is
so well satisfied as to declare that “never in this country’s history was
an army of citizen soldiers better looked after and cared for.” Sen-
ator Wadsworth, though a Republican, declared on the floor of the
Senate his belief that “the mobilization was performed as satisfac-
torily as could have been expected.” ‘The task was performed with
remarkable skill,” in the Washington Posts (Ind.) opinion; “rather
creditably on the whole,” says the Dallas News (Dem.), nearer the
border. In its Washington correspondence, the Chicago Daily News
(Ind.) quotes Major Douglas MacArthur as saying enthusiastically,
“When one considers the number of men moved and the distances
they were moved, the recent mobilization of the militia on the Mexi-
can border was the best job of its kind done by any country.” This
demonstration of the usefulness of the State militia as the nation’s
second line of defense gives the hitherto skeptical St. Louis Post
Dispatch (Ind.) “more assurance than discouragement.” It has,
the New York Times thinks, “already decreased the prejudice against
the Federalization plan.”
Staff article in Literary Digest, August 5, 1916 (New York), 287-289.
e a a aa MMMM ii
No. 57] “Stand by to Ram!” 229
57. “Stand by to Ram!” (1922)
BY LIEUTENANT-COMMANDER FITZHUGH GREEN (1926)
Green, no longer in active naval service, has devoted himself to Arctic explora-
tion and to writing, mostly on subjects related to explorers and their work. He
was co-author with C. A. Lindbergh of We (1928). This account of heroism typi-
fies the infinite variety of situations that may call for action by our defensive forces,
even in peace time.
U. S. NAVY GENERAL ORDER NO. 123
The Navy Department takes pleasure in announcing the award of a Medal of
Honor to Lieutenant Commander W. A. Edwards, U. S. Navy, for heroism in rescuing
452 men, women and children from the French military transport Vinh-Long, de-
stroyed by fire in the Sea of Marmora, Turkey, on December 16, 1922.
OR reasons best known to itself the French Government
suppressed the true story of the Vinh-Long’s calamity.
Lately we have been given to understand that “now it can be told.”
It is well worth telling. The feat of rescuing a whole shipload of
humanity with a frail and tiny torpedo-boat destroyer was an ex-
traordinary one, and the method of rescue was, so far as can be
learned, unique in the annals of the sea. Moreover, courage and
audacity of the first order were required to carry it out. Surely
American boldness at its best is a thrilling thing to see.
The first streaks of dawn on that December morning revealed two
vessels in the Sea of Marmora on parallel courses headed for Con-
stantinople. One was the big French transport Vinh-Long, loaded
with troops and their families. The other was the little American
destroyer Bainbridge. Three miles of black choppy seas separated
the pair.
One of the Vinh-Long’s French quartermasters came off his mid
watch at 4 A.M. Before turning in he lit a cigarette. From his ham-
mock a few moments later he tossed the smoking butt, he thought,
to the steel deck beneath him. Instead he tossed it in a spit-kid con-
taining rubbish. How Death must have grinned!
Presently a flicker of flame lighted the small compartment. Men
snored on. The flame rose. A puff of breeze carried it toward the
bulkhead, where a leaking gasoline drum stood.
230 The National Defence [1922
Abruptly a second flame flared up: the gasoline. A man aroused
and shouted the alarm. But before the jangling firebells could start
there came an explosion that shocked all hands and the passengers
wide-awake. A tank of hydrogen, meant tor a French army dirigible,
had gone off right above the burning gasoline.
Terrible fear seized the hearts of those aboard the transport. She
carried a cargo of ammunition. Fire could mean only one thing:
complete destruction of the ship and of 500 helpless human beings
in her. Nothing short of a miracle could save them.
Commander Edwards tells it:
“My officer of the watch had in the meantime sighted a vessel
to starboard. While he strove to make her out in the dim early morn-
ing light he suddenly saw a flash of fire near her stern. Sensibly he
put his helm hard over and sent word to me. This was simple routine
of the sea. There was no indication that my big crisis was getting
close.
“I was sleeping in the emergency cabin opening on the bridge.
Glancing out, I saw I had time to throw an old uniform over my
pajamas before we came within hail.
“ “Away Fire and Rescue Party,’ I told the watch officer. He
stepped to the general alarm. Gongs echoed between our decks.
Our boatswain’s mate took up the word. As we swung to for me to
hail the Frenchmen, I saw my men lined up ready to man our small
dories with pumps, axes, pulmotors and other rescue apparatus.
“ ‘Very smart outfit,’ I thought. ‘Now we’ll see what we can do
with it.’ It never occurred to me that when the end came my boats
would scarcely count.
“I jammed my megaphone to my lips and let go with a good loud
yell:
“ ‘Ship ahoy! Can we be of assistance?
“I saw the French captain at the end of his bridge ready to answer
me. Smoke billowed out of his after hatch. Hose played on the
flames. Orders were being shouted. A confused mass of sailors and
soldiers, women and children, were visible roaming anxiously about
the decks. Boats were being got ready for lowering.
“He raised his megaphone. I strained my ears. But his words
never came.
“His ship answered for him. Out of her waist rose a wide tongue
eee eae
No. 57] “Stand by to Ram!” 231
of yellow flame. With it went a cloud of wreckage. The big after
mast sprang skyward as if released by a spring. A terrific roar deafened
us. The transport had blown up amidships. This was my first hint
- of the dreadful experience just ahead.
“At my signal our boats went down. They did not wait for orders
to pick up the torn wretches who had been blown into the sea. Also
there were those who, maddened by fear, began throwing themselves
over the transport’s side.
“I did some fast thinking. Remember, it was dark. I hadn’t
any idea how many people there were aboard the French ship. My
complement was less than roo. I knew a destroyer could crowd 300
on her decks. Little did I reckon on the total of nearly 500 human
beings I was to be deluged with a few minutes later.
“Just then one of my boats returned with a semihysterical fel-
low from the burning ship, ‘She’s loaded with powder!’ he literally
screamed at me. ‘She will blow up ina moment! You will be blown
up too!’ Another explosion interrupted his frenzy. My worst fears
were realized.
“T told my watch officer to have men stand by to flood our maga-
zines, which carried their full allowance of high explosives. One lucky
shot from the crazy Vinh-Long and we would start popping the way
she was. Moreover, the water was now covered with flaming fuel
oil.”
Sooner or later every commanding officer finds himself in a position
involving the safety of others. In such a jam he must decide what
is the best course to take. His decision may mean great peril, even
death, to those under him. But his power, like his responsibility, is
at sea supreme.
“Of course,” says the young commander, “my whole impulse was
to do what I could for the poor wretches on the blazing ship before me.
But I could not forget that I had nearly a hundred fine young Ameri-
cans on my own vessel. They were ready to obey my every order.
The sight of men dying did not make them flinch. But I confess I
flinched inwardly when I thought of asking them to do what now
seemed the only right and decent thing for a ship of the United States
Navy to do.”
It was all a matter of seconds. But Edwards made his decision
after real thought. “The greatest good to the greatest number,”
232 The INational Defence [1922
was the keynote of his next move. He would put his little boat along-
side the Vinh-Long, with all her explosives!
“Stand by your lines!” he ordered.
Deck hands spread quickly to the coils of rope that were faked
down near chocks on the destroyer’s main deck.
Crash—bang! Again on the transport. More screams, and smoke
clouds slit by flame. But the Yankee sailors did not falter.
“She’s a warm baby, all right!” one lad remarked with a grin.
Five minutes later he was under the surgeon’s care, his flesh seared
by a fragment of hot steel.
A scene more violent than before now ensued. The Vinh-Long’s
passengers knew that their ship might at any moment be blown to
bits beneath their feet. They stampeded to the rail. For a moment
it looked as if the Bainbridge would be swamped by the human cata-
ract that poured upon her.
But, as before, the drama was harshly interrupted—this time by
an explosion so terrific that it nearly threw all hands off their feet.
All were temporarily blinded.
How anyone survived that burst, or why both ships were not in-
stantly sunk, one cannot say. Indeed, Edwards cannot even remem-
ber what occurred in the succeeding moments. All he knows is that
when he regained his senses the destroyer was some distance away
from the transport and lying at right angles to her. Every mooring
line had been severed.
Says the commander: “I glanced at the black mass of humanity
huddled near the Vinh-Long’s bow. The flames aft were reaching
toward them. Minor explosions continued.”
“No serious damage aboard—yet, sir,” reported the watch officer,
saluting. There was an ominous note in his “yet.”
Now came the superb feat of the day. The American captain had
to act quickly and with success or all was lost. With a daring and
resourcefulness worthy of the best traditions of the United States
Navy, Edwards threw all hope into a final stroke of seafaring
genius.
“Stand by to ram!” he cried. “Check water-tight doors! Flood
the forward magazines without orders if necessary! ’
He rang up the engine telegraphs: “Full speed ahead.” He knew
if he could cut deep into the Vinh-Long’s hull he would flood her
No. 57] “Stand by to Ram!” 233
between-decks. This might check the fire. And it would give those
still aboard her a chance to escape. Of course, he realized such a
move might also be the end of the Bainbridge.
© Coolly Edwards had the helmsman put her on a point near the
transport’s bridge. Perfect seamanship was required or the destroyer
would only sink herself. But the knifelike stem crunched into the
steel plates and the bold maneuver was successful.
Knowing that every second counted, no effort was made to control
the rush to escape from the floating charnel house. Nor did the mob
need any urging. Death was at their heels.
All the while the flames came closer. The minor explosions grew
more frequent. Suddenly those on the destroyer’s bridge became
conscious of a lunatic on the forecastle. One could see he was a French
officer, despite the shredded condition of his uniform, which clung in
rags about him. He sprang into the air and waved his arms at the
bridge. He was yelling hoarsely in his own tongue.
Then Edwards got him. He was telling what the smoke and up-
roar hid: that everyone alive was off the Vinh-Long.
“T nearly yanked our engine telegraphs out by their roots throwing
them into reverse,” says the commander. “We backed clear of the
blazing wreck. Our skins, most of them, were whole, and we were
still afloat.
“But our work was not yet done. Aboard us some were dead;
others were dying. Anguished screams of those burned were heart-
rending.
“Leaving the slowly sinking transport behind us, we put on all speed
for Constantinople. A few hours later we sighted the French flag-
ship in the harbor. I had already radioed for medical help.”
The first one aboard was the French rear admiral commanding
naval forces in the Levant. In Latin fashion he hugged Edwards and
kissed him on both cheeks. Charitably he directed that at once all
survivors be transferred to his flagship. As there was not an inch of
standing room aboard the American destroyer, this was a relief.
In the next breath he began inquiring excitedly for Madame some-
body. Edwards couldn’t make out the name.
Just then the plump female figure of a middle-aged Frenchwoman
emerged from the forward hatch. She wore the jumper and pants
of an American bluejacket. All began to chuckle, and Edwards was
234 The National Defence [1923
on the point of calling the French admiral’s attention to the grotesque
figure.
“But at that moment the admiral sprang forward. In two jumps
he reached the betrousered lady. With straining arms he embraced
her. Tears streamed down his cheeks as he showered her with kisses.
“Tt is Madame Grand-Clement, wife of Vice Admiral Graid-Clement,
my boss! ” he finally shouted over his shoulder.
Fitzhugh Green, in Colliers (New York, 1926), LXXVIII, No. 19, 19 ss.
58. Peace-Time Work of the Army (1923)
BY SECRETARY JOHN W. WEEKS
Weeks (1860-1926), a Massachusetts banker, was appointed Secretary of War
by President Harding in 1921; he held the same position in the Coolidge Cabinet
until his resignation in 1925. The emphasis here put upon the non-military work
of the Army was aoupuess in part intended to counteract the influence of post-wax
pacifism, which in some quarters favored the reduction of our military forces to ai-
most negligible proportions.
HE construction of the Panama Canal was merely one of a
continuous series of projects conducted by the Army engineers
for the development of our waterways. Beginning with the construc-
tion of the old Chesapeake and Ohio Canal and the Erie Canal, they
have continued their activities upon practically every navigable
waterway in our country, and their work has been of such uniform
excellence that there is a general acceptance of the belief that our
governmental engineering projects are unexcelled by any other coun-
try-on earth. si.
There are however many other fields in which the Army has con-
tributed. A former engineer officer is at present at the head of the
Chemical Warfare Service of the Army... .
Few Americans realize that the deadly mustard gas, as well as some
of the chlorine compounds developed by the Army, are being experi-
mented with successfully in the prevention of influenza and other
diseases of the respiratory tracts. This discovery grew through the
knowledge that during the great influenza epidemics, the employees
of some of the war gas factories were practically immune to the dis-
No 58] Peace-Time Work of the Army 235
ease. Extensive arrangements are made in the laboratories of the
Chemical Warfare Service to conduct research into the possibilities
for constructive use of other gases and liquids developed for defense.
Tear gases have become generally recognized as valuable in the action
of police against outlaws and in protection of banks and other build-
ings against burglars and safe robbers. Investigations of various war
gases have led to valuable contributions to the American dye indus-
try, as well as to chemical production generally. . . .
In the pest destruction experiments, the Army Air Service has been
called in to investigate means of spraying liquids over the growing
crops. The Department of Agriculture are calling for more planes
for this purpose than we can possibly provide. Our Air Service is
fully occupied with the development of commercial aviation, the
protection of forests, and preparation for defense, in addition to
activity against pests. In 1922 we were unable to provide planes
for forest protection in the State of California, and the California
Forester expressed the opinion that this was the direct cause of an
increase of 23% in incendiary fires in that year. Air patrols are fre-
quently able to discover new fires which escape the observation of
ground observers, and have been the first to report a considerable
percentage of destructive fires. The Air Service have also been called
upon to experiment in the spraying of fruit trees from the air. There
are now even efforts to develop a process of actual seeding from the
air. I need not impress upon you the general importance of our Air
Service as a defensive proposition. I do wish to impress upon Amer-
icans the fact that in preparing for defense, the Air Service are also
preparing the way for commercial air development. . . .
I am often challenged in the statement that the Army developed
the steel industry. It can be proven. The dominating influences
in steel development have been the provision of markets, the adapta-
tion of the use of steel, and the standardization of steel specifications.
The Army was the original market for steel products, opened up an
ever increasing field for its employment, and led the entire industry
in specifications for design. High grade steel dates from the Civil
War when the Army demanded superior gun metal... .
I have mentioned our work in colonization at the Panama Canal.
Colonization is one of the severest tests of the ideals of a nation. As
our country grew older this burden was thrust upon it, through ac-
236 The National Defence [1923
quisition of Alaska, Hawaii, Cuba, Porto Rico, the Philippines, and
Guam, as well as the Panama Canal Zone. Our burdens have been
successfully carried, and the major part of the task was that of the
Army. When gold was discovered in Alaska, it was the Army that
opened the harbors, and built the roads and trails leading to the mines.
Americans settled this new country, and were protected from lawless-
ness and mob rule by the Army. . . .
Just as in Alaska, the Army has a record of accomplishment in
other possessions. Building up public utilities, eradicating terrible
diseases, educating the children, attending even to spiritual needs,
creating the institutions of self-government and protecting these
from aggression—in all of these has the Army left its seal, which is
the seal of Americanism upon our possessions. In the Philippines,
where tribes once fought continuously, we have built roads, railroads,
schools, and churches, and have done more in twenty years than was
done before in centuries, to make the Filipinos a unified people. To
the Cuban we brought freedom and civilization. One of the greatest
influences for good in Cuba today is the American Ambassador, an
American Army officer who gained his experience in the Philippines.
In speaking of our tropical ventures, I cannot overlook the work
of Army medical men. The countries to the south of us, as well as
tropical countries throughout the world, were once ravaged by yellow
fever and malignant malaria. The French enterprise at Panama was
completely blocked because 75% of the employees lost their lives from
disease within a few months of their arrival. In 1901, a group of
medical officers, headed by Dr. Walter Reed of the Army, determined
definitely that yellow fever is transmitted by the mosquito. Within
a few months of the discovery, Havana was cleared of the disease
that had ravaged it for 150 years. One can now live in Panama with
as much assurance of health as though one were living in Continental
United States. When we took over the administration of Porto
Rico, the entire population was enervated by the results of what was
then called “tropical anemia.” Army officers demonstrated that
this disease is a hookworm infection and these people have been
redeemed from a plague that would have forever hindered their
development. They have also played a considerable part in the
elimination of pellagra, and one of them made the first discovery of
Malta Fever in this country.
No. 57] Peace-Time Work of the Army Day
All of this work of the Medical Department had a bearing upon the
health of America. It moreover was preparing our officers to ad-
minister our war armies without the great disease losses of former
wars. During the Civil War, smallpox claimed over 7,000 victims,
during the World War only 14. In the Civil War malaria claimed
15,000—in the World War, 25. In the Spanish-American War,
20,000 men suffered from typhoid—in the World War we had 2,000
cases—a contrast between twenty per cent and one-twentieth of one
per cent, of the totals engaged in these wars. This marked progress
leads us to wonder if there was anything else that our medical men
could give to Americans who entered the armies. We find indeed that
there was. We are shocked to discover that approximately half of
our young men who were examined for service, had physical disabil-
ities of some sort. We should be pleased to realize that after a com-
paratively short time in service, under the supervision of our physical
trainers and our medical men, the recruits were generally developed
into fine specimens of American manhood. This is no exaggera-
tion. Because of prevention measures taken against such diseases
as typhoid, there is moreover no doubt that the prevalence of
these diseases has been greatly decreased throughout our general
population. .
A most vital element in national defense, more important perhaps
than during peace time industry, is the question of transportation.
I have called your attention to the work of the Army in building rail-
roads, canals, harbors, and improving waterways generally. The
Public Roads Bureau has been given at cost, over a quarter billion
dollars worth of material for public road construction. Trucks and
tractors and many other manufactured elements are standardized
throughout Army organizations, and this process of standardization
has been recognized of great value to the industries. One concern
reports a 20% gain in sales through adoption of certain features
recommended by army equipment experts. The Ordnance Depart-
ment has periodic conferences with manufacturers relative to such
matters. Finally, there is one phase of transportational problems that
is even more directly an interest of the Army. The World War proved
to be a great drain upon our stock of horses and mules and the stand-
ards have become rather depleted. The Army Remount Service
have been given leadership in the effort to elevate the standard. With
238 The National Defence [1923
the close coöperation of the Department of Agriculture and civilian
horse associations they have established a record of successful breed-
ing that compares favorably with the best European records, and that
assures us a timely solution for this vital problem.
We could not afford to maintain a great pioneer organization to
perform such functions as I have described alone. Such benefits can
come only from some organized and trained public body which pro-
duces them as by-products and still performs its primary tasks. The
Army is being trained primarily for emergency use. It is not limited
to the emergency of war. When the Mississippi overflows its banks,
it is the Army that is called upon for protection, supply, and relief.
After the San Francisco Fire in 1906, it was the Army that took
charge of disorder and administered the emergency relief forces until
civilian organization could be formed. In the Galveston flood, the
Mount Pelée disaster, during the floods on the Ohio in 1912, and in
nearly every grave civil emergency in our history, the Army made
similar records of accomplishment for which there are huge files of
grateful letters of appreciation. .
Many Americans are surprised that the Army is able to accomplish
what it does in the way of civic accomplishment. They forget that
the War Department is one of the greatest administrative schools
in the country. I have looked up the record of former regular officers
and I was really amazed at its excellence. There is scarcely a high
office under the Government to say nothing of high achievement in
private life, that has not been attained to by army officers. States-
men, lawyers, financiers, authors, even artists of world renown—all
had their training in the service of the Regular Army. I might point
to a few examples at the present day. The Governor General of the
Philippines, our most important foreign possession, the head of the
Bureau of the Budget, a new undertaking that is absorbing the minds
of our statesmen—the President of the Radio Corporation of America
—the Ambassador to Cuba—the Governor of the Panama Canal
Zone—the head of the Veterans’ Bureau—all of these are posts of
predominant importance, and all are held by public servants who have
been until recently officers of the Regular Army... .
Next to the belief that army officers are incapable of handling big
business and finance, which I trust I have counteracted by the few
brief proofs to the contrary which I have just offered, there is among
No. 58] Peace-Time Work of the Army 230
our citizens the belief that we pay too much for our army. This
belief. is fostered by certain pacifist organizations which are continu-
ally circulating incorrect and misleading statistics relative to the cost
of national defense. Typical of this false propaganda was a recent
statement purporting to be an official analysis of the Budget, wherein
it was claimed that 85% of our Budget will go for past and future
wars. The real report of the Budget proves that but 13.5% of the
Federal Budget is for present national defense and only 32.7% for
purposes relating to past wars as well as present defense, including
pensions, insurance and similar items. One cannot condemn too se-
verely the tactics of those who thus seek to mislead the American
public concerning such a vital matter as national defense. .. .
An analysis of city and state governmental budgets in thirteen of
our largest cities indicates that out of every dollar of taxes approxi-
mately 214 cents is spent for the upkeep of our army, and about 6
cents for army and navy together. If the radical pacifists succeeded
in their desire to do away with our entire military organization the
result would merely reduce the dollar of taxation to about 97% cents.
Such a policy of false economy would be laughed at by a business
man, preparing for the insurance of his property. . . .
Americans need not be afraid of militarism as long as their own
hearts are set against war. They need have no fear of the growth of
a militaristic class, as long as they take the interest in national de-
fense that the responsibilities of citizenship demand of them. They
should, however, be on guard against the dangers of going too far in
the desire for peace. We should obey the words of our past leaders
who urged us to be industrious and constructive, but to resist alike
the coercion and the aggression of those who would interfere with
our destiny... .
John W. Weeks, Other Things the Army Does besides Fight, address before Los
Angeles Chamber of Commerce, May 21, 1923 (Washington, Government Printing
Office, 1923), 4-18 passim.
PARTY
DOMESTIC PROBLEMS AND ADVANCES
CHAPTER XII — CATASTROPHES
sg. The San Francisco Disaster (1906)
BY MAJOR-GENERAL ADOLPHUS W. GREELY
Greely, soldier and Arctic explorer, was the ranking Army officer on duty in San
Francisco at the time of the earthquake and fire of 1906. This account quotes at
length the report of Funston, who was actually on the ground at the moment of the
catastrophe. Californians always refer to it as “the fire.” The water mains were
shattered by the earthquake. Greely is the author of a long list of works on scien-
tific subjects—mainly climatology and meteorology—connected with his profession
He was the first volunteer private soldier of the Civil War to reach the grade oł
brigadier-general, U. S. A.—Bibliography: contemporary periodicals.
HEADQUARTERS PactFic DIvisiIon, SAN FRANCISCO, CAL.,
JULY 30, 1906
IR: In accordance with the instructions of the Hon. William H.
Taft, Secretary of War, under date of June 29, 1906, I have the
honor to submit herewith a comprehensive report of the services of
the United States Army in connection with the recent earthquake
and conflagration in the city of San Francisco, Cal., and the relief
measures rendered necessary by these disasters. . . .
The report of operations of Brigadier-General Funston, who was
temporarily in command during my absence, from April 18 to 22, fol-
lows in full:
I have the honor to make the following report of the work of the troops in con-
nection with the recent earthquake and conflagration in the city of San Francisco,
240
No. 59] The San Francisco Disaster 24I
from the morning of the 18th of April, 1906, until the return of the division com-
mander on the 22d of the same month:
I was living at 1310 Washington street, near Jones, and was awakened by the
earthquake shock at 5.16 a. m. of April 18. Realizing from the intensity and dura-
tion of the shock that serious damage to the city, with attendant loss of life, must
have occurred, I dressed, and, finding that the street cars were not running, hastened
on foot to the business part of the city. My route was down Jones street to Cali-
fornia and along that street to Sansome. That portion of California street between
Jones and Powell being one of the most elevated in the city, I had noticed that
columns of smoke were arising in various localities, particularly in the region south
of Market street. Reaching Sansome I saw that several fires were already burning
fiercely in the banking district and that the firemen who were on the scene were
quite helpless owing to lack of water. This, in connection with the number of
fires I had seen from the higher part of California street, convinced me that a most
serious conflagration was at hand, and that, owing to the great extent of the area
in which fires had already appeared, the police force of the city would be totally
inadequate to maintain order and prevent looting and establish and hold the proper
fire lines in order that the fire department might not be hampered in its work. By
this time the streets were full of people, somewhat alarmed but by no means panic
stricken. Encountering a patrolman, I inquired of him how I could most quickly
communicate with the Mayor or Chief of Police, and was informed that the entire
telephone system was paralyzed, but that he felt sure that both of those officials
would immediately repair to the Hall of Justice on Portsmouth Square, which
surmise proved correct. I requested this man to hasten to the Hall of Justice and
leave word for the Chief of Police that I would at once order out all available
troops and place them at his disposal. There being no means of transportation
available and quick action being imperative, I then ran from the corner of Sansome
and California streets to the quartermaster’s stable, on Pine street, between Leaven-
worth and Hyde, a distance of slightly more than a mile, directed my carriage
driver to saddle a horse, and, while he was doing so, hastily wrote on a leaf from
a notebook a brief note addressed to the commanding officer, Presidio, directing
him to turn out the entire garrison and report for duty to the Chief of Police at the
Hall of Justice. The man was directed to stop at Fort Mason on his way to the
Presidio and give a verbal message to the same effect to the commanding officer
of that post. From here I proceeded on foot to the headquarters of the Depart-
ment of California, Phelan Building, at the corner of Market street and Grant
avenue, a distance of about a mile. Here I found several officers of the staffs of
the Pacific Division and the Department of California, as well as a number of clerks
and messengers who had already, under the direction of the chief clerk, Mr. A. R.
Holzheid, engaged in getting the more important records in shape for removal
from the building, if necessary. At about 7.45 a. m. arrived the first troops from
Fort Mason, Companies C and D, of the Engineers, Capt. M. L. Walker com-
manding. These troops had already been reported to the Mayor and the Chief of
Police, and had been directed by the former to guard the banking district and send
patrols along Market street to prevent looting. The arrival of these troops was
greeted with demonstrations of approval by the many people on the streets. At
242 Catastrophes [1906
about 8 a. m. the garrison from the Presidio, consisting of the roth, 29th, 38th,
66th, 67th, 7oth, and rosth Companics of Coast Artillery, Troops I and K, 14th
Cavalry, and the ist, oth, and 24th Field Batteries, Col. Charles Morris, Artillery
Corps, commanding, began to arrive. Detachments were sent to guard the mint
and post-office, while the remainder assisted the police in keeping the dense crowds
of onlookers away from close proximity to the fire and in patrolling the streets to
prevent the people from breaking into stores and saloons. Most fortunately the
latter had already been ordered closed by the Mayor, so that one source of danger
had been removed. ...
Early in the morning, shortly after it was seen that a serious conflagration was
at hand, the acting chief of the fire department had sent a message to the Presidio,
requesting that all available explosives, with a detail to handle them, be sent to
check the fire, as the earthquake had broken the water mains and the fire depart-
ment was practically helpless. The commanding officer of the Presidio ordered
Capt. Le Vert Coleman, post ordnance officer, to provide the necessary explo-
sives. . . . While many of the older and more fragile buildings could be destroyed
by high explosives, it was found that the modern steel-and-concrete buildings were
practically impervious to anything except enormous charges. .. .
About ro a. m. the commissary depot was destroyed, and I wired an estimate
of the extent of the disaster. I considered it necessary to make an estimate of the
number who would be rendered homeless by the fire in case the conflagration could
be checked within reasonable bounds. I asked, therefore, for tents and rations
for 30,000 people. As the fire progressed, however, it became evident that not
30,000, but probably more than 100,000, people would be homeless before mid-
night. Telegraphic request was therefore made that all available tents and rations
be forwarded as soon as possible. This step was considered necessary, as it seemed
then that all supply warehouses, not only for food but for bedding and shelter,
would inevitably be destroyed without the hope of saving even a small percentage
of their contents. A fact which made the saving of property most difficult was
that no wagons of any kind appeared to be in the vicinity of the fire to carry away
any goods that it might have been possible to save... .
Anxious inquiries were made as to the extent of the injuries to the water system.
No water appearing in any of the pipes in the vicinity of Fort Mason or, in fact,
any part of the city covered by the troops, it appeared for the time that a water
famine was inevitable. Steps were at once taken to have an examination made of
all the available sources of water supply outside the regular Spring Valley supply,
and it was found that there was an independent water supply in Golden Gate
Park, where were also lakes of fresh water of considerable size. . . .
By the night of the roth about 250,000 people or more must have been encamped
or sleeping out in the open in the various military reservations, parks, and open
spaces of the city.
The Pacific Squadron having arrived on the 19th, Admiral C. F. Goodrich, com-
manding, sent ashore an officer and offered to land a force to assist in the work
being done by the troops. The offer was most gladly accepted... .
The division commander, Maj.-Gen. A. W. Greely, having returned tc
the city on the evening of the 22d, I relinquished command of the Pacific Division,
No. 59] The San Francisco Disaster 243
which command I had exercised simultaneously with that of the department of
California, and from that time exercised command of the department alone. . . .
Without exception the officers of the division and department
staffs performed their duties so conscientiously and energetically
that it is a difficult, if not impossible, matter to make distinctions in
bestowing praise upon them... .
As I have already officially stated, the terrible days of earthquake
and fire in San Francisco were almost absolutely free from disorder,
drunkenness, and crime. The orderly and law-abiding spirit of the
people as a whole rendered the maintenance of public peace a com-
paratively easy task. Having in view the extent of ruin, the devasta-
tion of property, and the desperate condition of the vast numbers of
hungry and homeless, there might reasonably have been expected
many casualties from violence and disorder. . . .
In these days of earthquake and fire it was my misfortune to take
no active part. There remained on my return, April 22, duties less
striking, but nevertheless of import to the city. ...
The existent conditions in San Francisco were of the most appalling
character. While incapable of satisfactory description or adequate
expression, yet roughly summarized they were as follows: On April
18 this was a city of 500,000 inhabitants, the commercial emporium
of the Pacific coast, a great industrial and manufacturing center,
adorned with magnificent buildings, equipped with extensive local
transportation, provided with the most modern sanitary appliances,
and having an abundant water supply. On April 21 these triumphs
of human effort, this center of civilization, had become a scene of
indescribable desolation, more than 200,000 residents having fled
from the burnt district alone, leaving several hundred dead under its
smoldering ashes. The entire community of 450,000, deprived of all
modern conveniences and necessities, had, in forty-eight hours, not
only been relegated to conditions of primitive life, but were also ham-
pered by ruins and débris. Its entire business districts and adjacent
territory had been ravaged by fire. The burnt area covered 3,400
acres, as against 2,100 in Chicago and 50 in Boston. Of the 261 miles
of electric and cable railways not a mile remained in operation. While
probably 1,500 teams were uninjured, yet, as a whole, they had been
withdrawn with the refugees to the outlying districts. Practically
all travel had to be on foot, the few automobiles having been impressed
244 Catastrophes [1906
by the authorities. The intricate masses of iron, brick, and débris
were supplemented in the unburned area by fallen buildings and
chimneys, which made all travel circuitous and extremely difficult.
The city telephone system was interrupted; every telegraph office
and station had been destroyed. All the banks, deposit vaults, and
trust buildings were in ruins. Not a hotel of note or importance was
left standing. The great apartment houses had vanished. Of the
thousands of wholesale and large retail establishments scarce half
a dozen were saved, and these in remote districts. Even buildings
spared by the fire were damaged as to chimneys, so that all food of
the entire city was cooked over camp fires in the open streets.
Two hundred and twenty-five thousand people were not only home-
less, losing all real and personal property, but also were deprived of
their means of present sustenance and future livelihood. Food,
water, shelter, clothing, medicines, and sewerage were all lacking.
Failing even for drinking purposes, water had to be brought long
distances. Every large bakery was destroyed or interrupted. While
milk and country produce were plentiful in the suburbs, local trans-
portation was entirely interrupted so that even people of great wealth
could obtain food only by charity or public relief. In short, all those
things which are deemed essential to the support, comfort, and de-
cency of a well-ordered life were destroyed or wanting.
The quarter of a million people driven into the streets by the flames
escaped as a rule only with the clothing they wore. Thousands upon
thousands had fled to the open country, but tens of thousands upon
tens of thousands remained in the parks, generally in stupor or ex-
haustion after days of terror and struggle... .
This report would be incomplete if it did not recognize the sterling
qualities of the people of San Francisco. Almost without exception
these people suffered financially, varying from small losses to total
ruin. It is safe to say that nearly 200,000 persons were brought to
a state of complete destitution, beyond the clothing they wore or
carried in their arms. The majority of the community was reduced
from conditions of comfort to dependence upon public charity, yet
in all my experiences I have never seen a woman in tears, nor heard
a man whining over his losses. Besides this spirit of cheerful courage,
they exhibited qualities of resourcefulness and self-respect which
must command the admiration of the world. Within two months
No. 60] The Sinking of the Titanic 245
the bread line, which at first exceeded 300,000, was reduced to a
comparative handful—less than 5 per cent of the original number.
Maj.-Gen. Adolphus W. Greely, Special Report on Army Relief Operations at San
Francisco (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1906), 5-47 passim.
a
60. The Sinking of the Titanic (1912)
FROM THE REPORT OF THE SENATE COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE
After the Titanic disaster of April 14-15, 1912, the survivors were brought to the
United States, and this circumstance, together with the fact that many of those lost
were American citizens, led the Senate of the United States to direct an examina-
tion of as many of the witnesses as were available, and an investigation into the
circumstances of the disaster.
N the third day out ice warnings were received by the wireless
operators on the Titanic, and the testimony is conclusive that
at least three of these warnings came direct to the commander of the
Titanic on the day of the accident, the first about noon, from the
Baltic, of the White Star Line. It will be noted that this message
places icebergs within 5 miles of the track which the Titanic was
following, and near the place where the accident occurred. The
message from the commander of the Baltic is as follows:
STEAMSHIP “BALTIC,” April 14, 1912.
Capt. SMITH, Titanic:
Have had moderate variable winds and clear fine weather since leaving. Greek
steamer Athinat reports passing icebergs and large quantity of field ice to-day in
latitude 41.51 north, longitude 49.52 west. Last night we spoke German oil tank
Deutschland, Stettin to Philadelphia, not under control; short of coal; latitude
40.52 north, longitude 55.11. Wishes to be reported to New York and other
steamers. Wish you and Titanic all success.
COMMANDER.
The second message was received by the Titanic from the Calti-
fornian, of the Leyland Line, at 5.35 p. m. New York time, Sunday
afternoon, reporting ice about 19 miles to the northward of the track
which the Titanic was following. This message was as follows:
Latitude 42.3 north, longitude 49.9 west. Three large bergs 5 miles to the south-
ward of us. Regards. (Sig.) Lora.
246 Catastrophes [1912
The third message was transmitted from the Amerika via the Ti-
tanic and Cape Race to the Hydrographic Office in Washington, D. C.,
reporting ice about 19 miles to the southward of the course being
followed by the Titanic, and reads as follows:
STEAMSHIP “AMERIKA,” VIA “TITANIC” AND CAPE RACE, N. F.,
April 14, 1912.
HYDROGRAPHIC OFFICE, Washington, D. C.:
Amerika passed two large icebergs in 41.27 N., 50.8 W., on the 14th of April.
KONTUR:
This message was actually received at the Hydrographic Offce in
Washington at 10.51 p. m., April 14.
The fourth message was sent to the Titanic at 9.05 p. m. New York
time, on Sunday, the 14th of April, approximately an hour before the
accident occurred. The message reads as follows:
We are stopped and surrounded by ice.
To this the operator of the Titanic replied:
Shut up. Iam busy. I am working Cape Race.
While this was the last message sent by the Californian to the
Titanic, the evidence shows that the operator of the Californian kept
the telephones on his head, and heard the Titanic talking to Cape
Race up to within a few minutes of the time of the accident, when he
“put the phones down, took off his clothes, and turned in.”
The Baltic’s operator on that Sunday overheard ice reports going
to the Titanic from the Pring Friedrich Wilhelm, and from the Amerika,
while the Carpathia on the same day overheard the Parisian talking
about ice with other ships.
This enables the committee to say that the ice positions so defi-
nitely reported to the Titanic just preceding the accident located ice
on both sides of the track or lane which the Titanic was following,
and in her immediate vicinity. No general discussion took place
among the officers; no conference was called to consider these warn-
ings; no heed was given to them. The speed was not relaxed, the
lookout was not increased, and the only vigilance displayed by the
officer of the watch was by instructions to the lookouts to keep “a
sharp lookout for ice.” It should be said, however, that the testi-
mony shows that Capt. Smith remarked to Officer Lightoller, who
No. 60] The Sinking of the Titanic 247
was the officer doing duty on the bridge until 10 o’clock ship’s time,
or 8.27 o’clock New York time, “If it was in a slight degree hazy
there would be no doubt we should have to go very slowly” and “If
in the slightest degree doubtful, let me know.” The evidence is that
it was exceptionally clear. There was no haze, and the ship’s speed
was not reduced.
The speed of the Titanic was gradually increased after leaving
Queenstown. The first day’s run was 464 miles, the second day’s
run was 519 miles, the third day’s run was 546 miles. Just prior to
the collision the ship was making her maximum speed of the voyage—
not less than 21 knots, or 2414 miles per hour.
At 11.46 p. m. ship’s time, or 10.13 p. m. New York time, Sunday
evening, April 14, the lookout signalled the bridge and telephoned
the officer of the watch, “Iceberg right ahead.” The officer of the
watch, Mr. Murdock, immediately ordered the quatermaster at the
wheel to put the helm “hard astarboard,” and reversed the engines;
but while the sixth officer standing behind the quartermaster at the
wheel reported to officer Murdock “The helm is hard astarboard,”
the Titanic struck the ice. The impact, while not violent enough
to disturb the passengers or crew, or to arrest the ship’s progress,
rolled the vessel slightly and tore the steel plating above the turn of
the bilge.
The testimony shows that coincident with the collision air was
heard whistling or hissing from the overflow pipe to the forepeak
tank, indicating the escape of air from that tank because of the in-
rush of water. Practically at once, the forepeak tank, No. 1 hold,
No. 2 hold, No. 3 hold, and the forward boiler room, filled with water,
the presence of which was immediately reported from the mail room
and the racquet court and trunk room in No. 3 hold, and also from the
firemen’s quarters in No. 1 hold. Leading Fireman Barret saw the
water rushing into the forward fireroom from a tear about two feet
above the stokehold floor plates and about twenty feet below the
water line, which tear extended into the coal bunker at the forward
end of the second fireroom.
The reports received by the captain after various inspections of
the ship must have acquainted him promptly with its serious con-
dition, and when interrogated by President Ismay, he so expressed
himself. It is believed, also, that this serious condition was promptly
248 Catastrophes [1912
realized by the chief engineer and by the builders’ representative,
Mr. Andrews, none of whom survived.
No general alarm was sounded, no whistle blown, and no syste-
matic warning was given the passengers. Within 15 or 20 minutes
the captain visited the wireless room and instructed the operator
to get assistance, sending out the distress call, C. Q. D.
This distress call was heard by the wireless station at Cape Race
that evening at 10.25 p. m. New York time, together with the report
that she had struck an iceberg, and at the same time was accidentally
overheard by the Mount Temple, which ship immediately turned
around toward the Titanic. Within two or three minutes a reply
was received from the Frankfurt. Within ro minutes the wireless
operator of the Carpathia fortunately and largely by chance heard
the Titanic’s C. Q. D. call, which he reported at once to the bridge
and to the captain. The Carpathia was immediately turned around
and reported her latitude and longitude to the Titanic, together
with the fact that she was steaming full speed toward the stricken
ship. The Frankfurt, however, did not give her latitude or longi-
tude, and after waiting 20 minutes asked the operator of the Titanic,
“What is matter?” To this the Titanic operator replied that he was
a fool.
In view of the fact that no position had been given by the Frank-
furt, and that her exact distance from the Titanic was unknown at
that time, the answer of the operator of the Titanic was scarcely
such as prudence would have dictated. Notwithstanding this, how-
ever, the Frankfurt was overheard by the Mount Temple to report,
“Our captain will go for you.” Communication was promptly es-
tablished with the Olympic and the Baltic, and the Caronia, some
800 miles to the eastward, overheard the Titanic’s C. Q.D. call. The
wireless messages of the Titanic were recorded in part by the Cape
Race station and by the Mount Temple, and in part by the Baltic.
The Mount Temple last heard the Titanic after the accident at 11.47
p. m. New York time. The Baltic and the Carpathia lost touch
about the same time, the last message they received being “Engine
room getting flooded.” The Virginian last heard the Titanic’s signals
at 12.27 New York time, and reported them blurred, and ending
abruptly.
Sixteen witnesses from the Titanic, including officers and experi-
No. 60] The Sinking of the Titanic 249
enced seamen, and passengers of sound judgment, testified to seeing
the light of a ship in the distance, and some of the lifeboats were di-
rected to pull for that light, to leave the passengers and to return
to the side of the Titanic. The Titanic fired distress rockets and
attempted to signal by the electric lamp and Morse code to this
vessel. At about the same time the officers of the Californian admit
seeing rockets in the general direction of the Titanic and say that
they immediately displayed a powerful Morse lamp, which could
be easily seen a distance of 10 miles, while several of the crew of the
Californian testify that the side lights of a large vessel going at full
speed were plainly visible from the lower deck of the Californian at
11.30 p. m. ship’s time, just before the accident. There is no evidence
that any rockets were fired by any vessel between the Titanic and the
Californian, although every eye on the Titanic was searching the
horizon for possible assistance.
The committee is forced to the inevitable conclusion that the Cali-
fornian, controlled by the same company, was nearer the Titanic
than the rọ miles reported by her captain, and that her officers and
crew saw the distress signals of the Titanic and failed to respond to
them in accordance with the dictates of humanity, international
usage, and the requirements of law. The only reply to the distress
signals was a counter signal from a large white light which was flashed
for nearly two hours from the mast of the Californian. In our opinion
such conduct, whether arising from indifference or gross carelessness,
is most reprehensible, and places upon the commander of the Cali-
fornian a grave responsibility. The wireless operator of the Cali-
fornian was not aroused until 3.30 a.m. New York time, on the morn-
ing of the 15th, after considerable conversation between officers and
members of the crew had taken place aboard that ship regarding
these distress signals or rockets, and was directed by the chief officer
to see if there was anything the matter, as a ship had been firing
rockets during the night. The inquiry this set on foot immediately
disclosed the fact that the Titanic had sunk. Had assistance been
promptly proffered, or had the wireless operator of the Californian
remained a few minutes longer at his post on Sunday evening, that
ship might have had the proud distinction of rescuing the lives of
the passengers and crew of the Titanic.
When Captain Smith received the reports as to the water entering
250 Catastrophes [z912
the ship, he promptly gave the order to clear away the lifeboats and
later orders were given to put women and children into the boats.
During this time distress rockets were fired at frequent intervals.
The lack of preparation was at this time most noticeable. There
was no system adopted for loading the boats; there was great inde-
cision as to the deck from which the boats were to be loaded; there
was wide diversity of opinion as to the number of the crew necessary
to man each boat; there was no direction whatever as to the number
of passengers to be carried by each boat, and no uniformity in loading
them. On one side only women and children were put in the boats,
while on the other side there was almost an equal proportion of men
and women put into the boats, the women and children being given
the preference in all cases. The failure to utilize all lifeboats to their
recognized capacity for safety unquestionably resulted in the needless
sacrifice of several hundred lives which might otherwise have been
saved.
The testimony is definite that, except in isolated instances, there
was no panic. In loading boats no distinction was made between
first-, second-, and third-class passengers, although the proportion
of lost is larger among third-class passengers than in either of the other
classes. Women and children, without discrimination, were given
preference.
The committee deems the course followed by Captain Rostron of
the Carpathia as deserving of the highest praise and worthy of especial
recognition. Captain Rostron fully realized all the risk involved. He
doubled his lookouts, doubled his fireroom force, and notwithstanding
such risk pushed his ship at her very highest limit of speed through
the many dangers of the night to the relief of the stricken vessel.
His detailed instructions issued in anticipation of the rescue of the
Titanic are a marvel of systematic preparation and completeness,
evincing such solicitude as calls for the highest commendation. The
precautions he adopted enabled him to steer his course between and
around icebergs until he stopped his engines at 4 o’clock in the morn-
ing in the vicinity of the accident, where he proceeded to pick up the
Titanic’s lifeboats with the survivors.
The first boat was picked up at 4.10 a. m. Monday, and the last
of the survivors was on board by 8.30 a. m., after which Captain
Rostron made arrangements to “hold service, a short prayer of thank-
No. 61] Saving New Orleans 251
fulness for those rescued, and a short burial service for those who were
lost.”
“Titanic” Disaster, Report of the Committee on Commerce, United States
Senate (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1912), 6-15 passim.
61. Saving New Orleans (1927)
BY L. C. SPEERS
Recurrent floods of the Mississippi and its tributary rivers have led to the de-
velopment of elaborate protective systems. That for the city of New Orleans is
only an example. For related material, see contemporary periodical accounts,
notably of the Ohio floods of 1912, and of relief work under Secretary of Commerce
Hoover in the greatest of all Mississippi floods, that of 1927.
AST to receive the impact of the crest of the heaviest flood
that ever swept down the Mississippi will be the levees that
half encircle New Orleans. Will they hold? The eyes of a nation
are focused on these man-made embankments that hold the fate of
the gay and lovely metropolis of the South, our chief foreign trade
port after New York. Bienville laid out the city not flush with but
below the level of the great river. The safeguarding levees, accord-
ing to tests by Federal, State and City engineers, will surely hold.
Three weeks ago New Orleans awoke to the realization that the
supreme test of the Mississippi levee system was at hand, for the
Mississippi’s highest flood was being reinforced by the maximum
discharges of her capacious tributaries, the Missouri, the Ohio, the
Arkansas, the St. Francis, the Yazoo and the Red. These waters
were roaring southward with a crest such as was never before re-
corded. With the crest still weeks away the Mississippi was rising
to record heights. In the emergency New Orleans mobilized for the
battle of defense. John Kloyrer, who has had seventeen years’ ex-
perience in levee engineering since graduation from Tulane, was voted,
as Commissioner of Public Property in the Government of New
Orleans, “plenary power to do all things necessary and requisite”
to preserve the safety of the city.
Klorer, grown gray-haired in the fight to hold the Mississippi con-
252 Catastrophes [1927
stantly in check, decided that the emergency demanded the dynamit-
ing of the main levee system south of New Orleans. This, he prom-
ised, would guarantee safety to the city. Without dissent, and with her
historic smile, New Orleans told Klorer to go ahead and she would
pay the bill.
It is seldom that one man is invested with such complete control
of the safety of a city of 425,000 inhabitants as John Klorer exercises
during the present peril. The correspondent of THE NEw YORK
Times asked him to describe the problem of saving the city, urging
that all America loves New Orleans and is interested in her history—
in preserving old St. Louis cathedral, the house built by the French
of New Orleans as a refuge for Napoleon Bonaparte, the field of
Chalmette where Jackson defeated the British, the picturesque
French Quarter and that part of New Orleans that is as modern as
New York.
“To understand the problem of defense against the record-breaking
flood it is necessary to consider the topography of New Orleans,”
he answered.
“Tts site was chosen more for military and strategic reasons than
for the advantages it possessed as a commercial depot.
“As is the case near all alluvial streams, the highest land is immedi-
ately alongside the river; from the banks it slopes gradually toward
the interior. The levees are only artificial elevations of the banks,
and these levees are the highest land in New Orleans. On the com-
mercial front the levees are not apparent, because the ground has
been filled in artificially. On the riverfront levees are sixteen to twenty
feet, and some portions of the city are as much as twenty feet below
the level of the high waterline.
“These sections are also one to two feet below Gulf level. Behind
the city is Lake Pontchartrain, subject to a tidal rise of about one
foot and a storm rise of five to six feet. Thus it is necessary to protect
New Orleans not only from water invasion in the front but from a
similar invasion in the rear, and on both sides. New Orleans is,
therefore, entirely surrounded by levees.
“Of this line of defense, about twenty-five miles are on the river-
front, divided equally between the left and right bank. About forty
miles comprise the outer walls. Counting the levees with which the
waterways penetrating the city from the lake must be prevented
No. 61] Saving New Orleans 253
from overflowing their banks into the city, New Orleans is protected
by about 106 miles of these embankments.
“A part of the interior levee system is known as the Upper Protec-
tion Levee. It runs from the river to the lake and is about six miles
long. This was built after the Sauve crevasse of 1849, fifteen or
twenty miles above the city, which spilled a good deal of backwater
into New Orleans. Its purpose is to keep the city dry in the event
of a break in the levees within forty miles upstream.
“The river levees are the strongest on the entire Mississippi. There
was never any apprehension that they would break, despite the fact
that a flood stage of twenty-four feet and possibly more was forecast
in April, because of the river heights further upstream.
“Water has not pressed against the upper protection levee suff-
ciently to be an annual remainder to build that structure as strong
as possible; and as the years passed without a crevasse above the city
there was such a slackening in vigilance that about twenty-five years
ago the municipal authorities permitted a large drainage canal to
be excavated along the foot of this levee. This weakening to the
foundation makes it rather problematical whether this upper pro-
tection levee could hold out the eight or ten feet of water that would
be poured against the city by a crevasse a few miles above the city
limits.
“ When the water levels up-river began to rise high late this Spring
and when in April the Government meteorologist at New Orleans
forecast a flood stage of 24 feet, with the possibility that the water
would rise a foot higher if the winds were unfavorable, a very real
alarm was felt here. There was even fear that the levees at New
Orleans would break because they had never been called upon to
stand such a rush of water.
“This fear was not seriously entertained by engineers who under-
stood conditions. Engineers, however, did entertain grave appre-
hensions regarding the levees in the country adjoining the city. This
fear was concerned, not only with the Upper Protection Levees, but
also with the lake front levee, for if the Mississippi poured a sizable
crevasse into Lake Pontchartrain its level would be raised three feet,
if not more.
“The Levee Board threw all of its resources behind strengthening
the hundred-odd miles of embankment that protect New Orleans on
254 Catastrophes [1927
its front, rear and sides. A committee of citizens appointed by Mayor
O’Keefe, acting upon technical advice, concluded that the situation
required further safeguards. They advised cutting the levee below
the city, near the old Poydras crevasse, that in 1922 had taken two
and a half feet off the river.
“The cross-section of the riverfront levees at New Orleans is much
more than the standard established by the Mississippi River Com-
mission. But in some places the height was not up to grade, a fact
due to wharfs that had been built, and to other reasons. The problem
in this sector therefore involved only topping the levee to take care
of the ultimate inches of flood water that might develop.
“This problem was complicated by the distance from which material
had to be moved. For there are no bluffs or hills in the city limits.
It was necessary to haul material from a distance of 40 to 50 miles,
and so a transportation as well as a construction problem had to be
solved. The material was assembled by railroad excavating ma-
chines, packed into sacks and shipped into New Orleans, where the
sand bags were built into stout ramparts along the levee tops to a
height of 3 feet in places. About 7 miles of levee were raised in this
manner.
“The interior levee system was raised by portable excavating ma-
chines. The material, in the main, was obtained on the water side
of the levee and placed against a line of boarding erected on the crown
of the levee. About ro miles were raised 2 to 3 feet in this manner.
Nearly 1,200 men were employed on this work. The cost to the city
may be estimated at $200,000.
“Because of the possibility that some person or persons of unsound
mentality in the section below the city, where the levee was cut to
relieve the pressure, might break the levees at New Orleans in reprisal
it was necessary to police the ramparts closely. Electric lights were
erected on the crown of the levee, tools were assembled, frequent
telephone stations were established.
“Agreement was reached with the authorities of all Bernard and
Plaquemines parishes below the city to cut the levee at the station
named Caernarvon, two miles below the natural crevasse of five
years before. The New Orleans Levee Board agreed to reimburse
the residents for all property losses by a special tax which it had the
authority to levy in time of emergency.
No. 61] Saving New Orleans 255
“The cutting of this levee began on April 29 and continued for
two weeks gradually, lest the run-off of water, developing too sud-
denly, should cause the sloughing of the banks upstream. About 35
tons of dynamite were used to break this levee, a fact which testifies
to the strength of these embankments, and the dynamite was aided
by powerful eroding influences of the current, once the opening was
started. The break was allowed to reach a width of about 3,000 feet.
“The cost of breaking this levee was about $25,000. The total
of the indemnity to the property holders cannot be accurately esti-
mated at present. If it is $2,000,000, the protective devices with
which New Orleans has supplemented the levees to meet this year’s
flood have cost nearly $2,500,000.
“The results have been everything that we expected and hoped.
The river today is at least two and a half feet lower than it would
have been had it not been for the Point-a-la-Hache and Caernarvon
breaks.”
New York Times, May 15, 1927.
CHAPTER XIII — TRANSPORTATION AND
COMMUNICATION
62. James J. Hill, Builder of a Frontier (1901)
BY MARY C. BLOSSOM
Hill, though a good part of his work was accomplished before the period covered
by this volume, was one of the great guiding powers behind our present-day system
of transportation. His energy and his capacity for inspiring loyalty were tremen-
dous, and perhaps his most striking memorial is the fact that the region which he
opened is often referred to as “the Jim Hill country.” See also No. 83 below.—
Bibliography: J. G. Pyle, Life of J. J. Hill.
ORTY-FIVE years ago there went into the great new coun-
try of Minnesota a young Scotch-Irish farmer from Canada.
He was the sixteenth of his name in direct line of descent, hardy and
alert. At the age of eighteen in the straggling village of St. Paul he
became check-clerk and caretaker of freight at the steamboat land-
ing...
In 1862 the first ten miles of railroad in the state were finished
with great effort. It ran from the levee in St. Paul to the riverside
in St. Anthony, and was known as the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad,
of which Mr. Hill later became the agent. . . .
There is no record of an enterprise of Mr. Hill’s in which he has not
succeeded. In his enterprises, of course, he uses the same agents
that others use, but with a sense of proportion and with a concentra-
tion of utility that makes his power reach twice as far and accomplish
twice as much as most other men... .
For several years the St. Paul and Pacific system of railroads,
consisting of 437 miles of completed track, was in bad condition. It
was mortgaged, the roadbed was not good, the time was one of great
depression in the financial world, the stockholders, mostly Holland
capitalists, were weary with delay and misfortune. Because of his
faith in the future of the region that he knew so well, Mr. Hill formed
a syndicate of five persons which soon gained possession of the road,
256
No. 62] James J. Hill, Builder of a Frontier 257
and in June, 1870, the system was consolidated into a single owner-
ship as the St. Paul, Minnesota & Manitoba Railroad Company.
The task was not an easy one; the untiring industry and foresight of
the moving spirit were taxed to the utmost. At a time when he was
striving to complete a certain piece of road in order not to lose a land
grant, he worked night and day, personally supervising the construc-
tion, laying ties under most adverse conditions, and getting water
out of the way as best he could. The service of a friend who labored
with him unceasingly in this hour of need has never been forgotten.
To crown their efforts the road was completed two days before the
appointed time.
Later it was extended to the Pacific coast, traversing vast tracts
of land without human habitation. The track was well laid but the
stations were often only freight cars, remote from one another, and
remote from other human settlements. Dismal predictions were
made, but not for a moment did the unflinching courage and purpose
of the leader waver. The Cascade Mountains were rich in lumber of
a growth so large as to be useful for purposes not previously possible
for single trees. Some of the trees had gained four or five hundred
rings, proving them to have been large when Columbus discovered
America. Coal fields were discovered, and a branch road carried their
produce for the use of the main line. Settlements were formed for
preparing the lumber for shipment; and Mr. Hill was all along the
line, giving words of practical advice to newcomers, telling them the
kind of stock they ought to keep, and how to get it, and what to feed
it, and giving them many other bits of practical assistance. While
the work was going on through this region, Mr. Hill rode over the
rough mountains on horseback, deciding problems of tunnels and the
like. He knows the cost of a bridge as well as his engineers, and more
than once he has torn up specifications and saved money by using
his own plans. One reason why the road has held its own while others
failed, is that before putting it into operation he spent $5,000,000 in
grading. It was Mr. Hill who taught the workers in the lumber
country to alternate the thick and thin ends of the shingle so as to
make flat, square packages, and thus economize space in the cars.
He is sometimes called exacting with the employees of the road. It
is because the work must be done the best way; and, when a division
superintendent is not packing his freight to the best advantage, he
258 Transportation and Communication [1901
is not retained because he is a nice old man, but his place is taken
by a man who can load cars well. In some cases it may not seem
sufficient consideration of the individual, but great forces often do
not consider individuals.
There is nothing Mr. Hill feels more keenly than his responsibility
to his stockholders. Before the panic of 1893, $30,000,000 had been
provided by Mr. Hill for the road; and when the financial crash came,
as this money was not in use, Mr. Hill lent it to relieve the strain,
saved many men from ruin, and helped to preserve confidence. There
are two old ladies in New Hampshire who had put $10,000 into the
Manitoba road; and to this day Mr. Hill says to the stockholders at
the meetings: “We still keep faith with the old ladies.” The confi-
dence felt in him by European investors is profound. He and Lord
Roberts are close friends, and all of Lord Roberts’ possessions beside
his campbed and his uniform and his recent grants by Parliament are
invested in the Great Northern railroad.
The first year the road was in operation, 1890, trade was paralyzed,
the competition was great, and the country along the route was yet
unsettled; but the mind which had planned the great enterprise had
provided for its success. The officers of the road offered to have their
salaries cut down, Mr. Hill receiving none; and reductions were
made, ranging from large sums down to ten cents a day from some of
the employees. When 10,000 men receive ten cents less a day the
saving amounts to a considerable sum.
To ship valuable lumber eastward was an excellent plan; but to
send empty cars after it was out of the question; so Mr. Hill conceived
the idea of shipping grain for the Japanese steamers to carry to the
Orient. An agent was sent to China and Japan to find out what the
cost of wheat must be to compete with rice; and the result was the
Japanese Navigation Company, the third largest steamship company
in the world, began to carry large shipments of grain to China and
Japan. This was a foresighted piece of work surely. These boats
were soon found to be inadequate for the shipment of the grain,
lumber, cotton, steel rails, tobacco and silver which soon became a
part of our exports to the Orient. Two large new steamers are there-
fore now in process of construction at New London for the Oriental
trade SENN,
The question of docks for these large steamers was the next that
No. 62] James J. Hill, Builder of a Frontier 259
came up. Seattle, the western terminus of the road, is built on the
side of a hill, which continues to slope very gradually under the water.
Moreover, there is in the water a very destructive mollusk called the
teredo or shipworm, which burrows into wood and soon destroys
every kind of timber. The fertile brain of Mr. Hill met this difficulty
also. He caused thousands of tons of brush which the teredo cannot
penetrate, to be carried and dumped into the water in two sections,
leaving a channel between. Then the channel was found not to be
deep enough; so out of this a huge hydraulic pump removed the mud
and gravel and forced them into the brush, making quite a compact
mass. Then creosoted piles, prepared by a very expensive process,
were found to be impervious to the dreaded teredo, and were driven
outside the brush and gravel. In this way a depth of forty-six feet
of water has been provided for the great steamers when they shall
begin their work.
The original 437 miles of completed road of which Mr. Hill took
charge as manager, now number as the Great Northern System,
6,000 miles. In 1883 he became president of the company. While
other transcontinental roads have collapsed and gone into the hands
of receivers, the Great Northern has never once defaulted the interest
on its bonds or passed a dividend. The road extends from Puget
Sound to St. Paul, or during the season of navigation to Duluth and
Superior, where it connects for Buffalo with its own two most luxu-
rious steamers. A fleet of six freight vessels are added to these. The
grain ships moviag through the “Soo” give that canal rank over the
Suez in point of tonnage.
In developing this great scheme of his life, the plan has increased
enormously in the process. Besides laying the foundation of a great
fortune, it has in its fulfilment opened a very rich and vast new coun-
try, reached out to new markets for many American products, and
brought benefit to great numbers of people. All along the line of his
road he has encouraged the most diversified and productive farming,
and he has introduced new methods and labor-saving devices. .
Mr. Hill is often spoken of as a puzzle. Like other elemental forces
he is not easily understood. He is a figure of world-wide reputation
and a man of remarkable intellectual endowment, of a great con-
structive genius, of a marvelous capacity for detail, inventive and of
untiring industry; and behind all his qualities is the force of an in-
260 Transportation and Communication [190r
domitable will. For years he has been the embodiment of one great
idea.
He may discharge an employee who has served him fifteen years,
with no word of explanation and apparently with no effort to adjust
the fault, whatever it may be—because that man causes friction in
his vast machine. Yet he will care for and speak in the tenderest
way of an unhappy little dog that has fled to him for protection. He
will give a large sum of money to save a friend in danger of financial
disaster; he puts his mighty hand on the political machine and with-
out an instant’s delay retains for a fellow-citizen of integrity the office
he has filled well: he expresses civic pride in many ways. As the head
and energy of the great industry that he has built up and with his
touch on every part of it, he looks upon every man in its employ as
an instrument that does or does not do its work. He is capable of
being touched and influenced by a spiritual personality like that of the
beautiful old priest whose portrait stands in his library; and he can
feel contempt for the less powerful than those who are on his own
plane. A warm sympathy for old friends comes to the surface in his
nature; he takes up the roll of his old militia comrades and recounts
each name without faltering. . . .
On the other hand, Mr. Hill has displayed the greatest considera-
tion towards certain of the old employees who were personal friends
of his at an early day. A superintendent, one of the pioneer rail-
roaders of Minnesota, was retained on full pay long after his physical
condition incapacitated him for effective service. An assistant was
provided to relieve him of actual responsibility, and when he died,
leaving his family with little property, Mr. Hill gave the widow
$10,000 to maintain herself and children. So secretly was this good
deed performed that it did not become known till long afterwards.
The unvarying desire to remember and aid the friends of his less pros-
perous days is characteristic of Mr. Hill.
Mary C. Blossom, James J. Hill, in World’s Work, May, 1901 (New York), 721-
728 passim.
No. 63] Rural Free Delivery 261
63. Rural Free Delivery (1903)
BY MAX BENNET THRASHER
At the time of its introduction, the Rural Free Delivery service was, like all in-
novations, viewed with suspicion and disapproval in some quarters. The event,
of course, has proved it indispensable.
i Ror free delivery is as yet so much of a novelty in this coun-
try that when, a few months ago, a rural mail carrier in Michi-
gan invited me to spend a day driving with him over his thirty-mile
route, I was glad to avail myself of the opportunity which his invita-
tion afforded me to see something of the actual working of a system
which in about five years has grown from an experiment, at an expense
of $25,000 a year, to 14,000 actual working routes this year, operated
at a cost of $8,000,000, and asking for half as much more next year
to provide for the extension of the system.
I was the more interested in rural free delivery from the fact that
the establishment of a route in my home town in New Hampshire
had been proposed not long since, and so strongly opposed by some of
the citizens that the project had been abandoned. The reasons given
for the opposition were generally that small local offices at a distance
from the railroads would be discontinued, and the patrons did not
believe they would be so satisfactorily served by the new arrangement.
I think this feeling arose in the main from the rather common dis-
trust of any innovation, especially when it has to do with an institu-
tion so old and respected as the post office. Moreover, the local
office is usually located in a country store. The merchant, fearing
that the doing away with the office will injure this trade, argues that
it ought to be retained, and arrays on his side all those who are at-
tached to him by friendship or by accounts of more or less long stand-
ing on the store’s ledger.
I was told that all these objections had been made to the establish-
ment of the routes running out from Cassopolis, Mich., the town in
which I was staying at the time, and that a day’s drive among the
people would enable me to judge how they felt about rural free de-
livery after a little less than a year’s trial, the first route from that
office having been put in operation October ist, rgor.
There are four routes in operation from the Cassopolis post office
262 Transportation and Communication [1903
now. I was to go over Route No. 1, the first to be established. The
carrier on this route, Mr. G. B. Warner, was formerly a farmer living
several miles out of town and in the district which he now serves.
He therefore had the advantage of being well acquainted beforehand
with many of the patrons of the route and much of the country over
which he now drives daily. This route covers twenty-nine miles.
This, I was told, was a little longer than the average, twenty-five
miles being reckoned a practical working distance.
We left the post office at Cassopolis at 8.30 A. M. and were back
there at 5 P. M. There were 109 boxes on the route over which we
drove, and we stopped at over one hundred of them. Into those
boxes we distributed 264 papers, 37 letters, 8 postals, 12 circulars
and 2 packages. The day was Friday, and on account of the fact
that so many weekly papers are printed in the middle of the week,
the number of papers delivered that day was considerably above the
average. When the route was established there were only five daily
papers taken in the district which it was to serve. When I rode over
it there were sixty-five. . . .
About twenty-five monthly magazines are taken on this route.
The average number of pieces of mail delivered monthly by the
carrier with whom I rode at that time was 5,200. Since the route
was established the carrier had issued 262 money orders and regis-
tered 64 letters. The extension of the money order system is one of
the benefits of rural delivery. Few of the small discontinued country
offices were authorized to issue money orders. We issued two money
orders during the trip I made. One of these happened to be asked for
by a man whom I had been told was one of the most violent opponents
to the establishment of the route. I asked this man—a farmer—how
he liked the system.
“Wal,” he said, “I’ll be honest with you. I fit it jest the best I
knew how. I thought we didn’t want it. But if I was to sell my farm
to-morrow, and go to look for another to buy, I’d give five dollars to
an acre more for a place where they had rural delivery than I would
for one where they hadn’t.” One other farmer with whom I talked
was even more emphatic. He declared that he would never again
own a farm at any price outside the limits of rural free delivery.
We made the trip in a small, light, covered wagon, built expressly
for this purpose, so as to secure the comfort and convenience of the
‘No. 63) Rural Free Delivery 263
carrier with the least possible weight. . . . In the bottom of the
front end of the wagon and in easy reach of the driver’s seat is a set
of pigeon holes in which he arranges his mail as he drives, so as to
have it convenient for delivery. This man must have had between
fifty and seventy-five pounds of mail when he started out that morning.
Delivery begins about two miles out from the post office.
The exterior of the cart is painted a light blue, and from its size
and color the vehicle is conspicuous a long way off on the country
roads. The carrier wears the gray uniform of the regular postal
service. Each carrier is required to furnish his own wagon and the
horses to draw it, and to provide for the keep of the horses. Two
horses are necessary, so that they may have alternate days in which
to rest. It takes a pretty good horse to draw such a wagon over
twenty-five to thirty miles of country roads in all kinds of weather,
at all seasons of the year, making a hundred or more stops, and yet
the horse must be docile enough so that he will halt at a word from the
driver, when the wagon is alongside a box, and stand there until he
gets the word to go on, since both the driver’s hands must be occupied
in opening the box and depositing the mail in it. For all this and his
own services the carrier receives $600 a year.
The Department requires each man living on a route, who wishes
the service, to furnish an iron box and set it up on a post of suitable
height at some point on the route convenient to the carrier. Those
who do not do this must go to town for their mail. Where a man lives
off the route as laid out by the Department’s agent his box is set up
at the nearest convenient point and he comes to it for his mail. With
few exceptions the boxes are so near the houses that a signal affixed
to the end of each can be seen from the house. When the owner of a
box leaves mail in it for the carrier to collect he raises the signal,
to attract the carrier’s attention; when the carrier has put mail in
the box, he leaves the signal raised. . . .
The fact that the Department insisted on certain requirements as
to boxes was one of the things which made trouble in the establishing
of the route. These requirements in the main are that the boxes
must be of iron, and one of some dozen or so kinds approved of by
the Department as suitable. These boxes are not made by the De-
partment, but by private firms. The farmer is obliged to buy the
box and set it up, at a cost of about $2 to $3. Many farmers insisted
264 Transportation and Communication [1903
that they should be allowed to set up a homemade wooden box.
Some claimed that they could not afford to pay for the required iron
box. I suspect that the real reason in most cases was because they
objected to being—as they thought—“ dictated to.” A few men held
out for a time after the route was established and did not provide
boxes, but eventually they all got into line... .
The rural carrier is a daily connecting link between the farmer and
the world. By his help the farmers are sure of their mail every day.
Without it people who live three miles or more from a post office
rarely get their mail oftener than once a week, unless some one goes
to town on an errand and brings back the mail for a whole neighbor-
hood. In this case the mail is apt to be left at some central point for
chance distribution, which may cause delay or loss. . . .
Along the whole route I improved every opportunity to talk with
men and women about rural delivery. I did not find any who did
not approve of it, and most were enthusiastic. One man said: “It’s
one of the things that seems to bring back to us farmers some of the
money we've been paying out for years for taxes’’—indirect taxes
in the way of duties, I infer he meant. “Congress votes money,
lots of it,” he went on, “for armies, and war ships, and river and har-
bor improvements, and public buildings in cities and towns, and a good
many of us live and die and never see none of ’em. But here is some-
thing that comes right to our very doors, and we can’t help seeing
and feeling the good of our money.”
Max Bennet Thrasher, Thirty Miles with a Rural Carrier, in Independent, Feb-
tuary 5, 1903 (New York), LV, 311-317 passim.
No. 64] Parcel Post 205
64. Parcel Post (1913)
FROM THE OUTLOOK
The United States was slow to adopt the Parcel Post system, a device which had
already shown its worth in several foreign countries. Complications described by
this author were subsequently smoothed out by modifications in the classifying of
mail matter.—Bibliography: American Year Book, 1913.
HE parcel post is already in active competition with the express
companies. How seriously the competition is felt does not
yet appear, but that the effect is materia! and will increase seems
unquestionable. This of course is true only on small parcels, for the
parcel post limit is eleven pounds, and above that weight the express
monopoly is undisturbed. .. .
So long as the express companies keep their rates for the lighter
parcels at the present figures, there seems to be every reason why the
use of the parcel post should continue to increase. There is one ele-
ment, however, which gives the express companies an advantage
even on the parcels within the eleven-pound limit. The express
rates automatically carry with them insurance against loss. In the
parcel post, however, a parcel must be definitely insured through the
payment of an additional fee of ten cents in practically the same way
that a letter is registered. The addition of this fee to the various
rates in the table above [not reprinted] will naturally decrease the dif-
ference in favor of the parcel post. But even if the insurance fee is
paid, in almost every case the resulting post-office rates are the lower.
This comparison of rates suggests that, as far as it goes, the parcel
post ought to be popular. But is it popular?
Thus far there are available figures for only one month. In the
first two weeks of its operation there were despatched from the fifty
largest post-offices in the country six million parcels. In the second
two weeks there were despatched eight and a half-million parcels—
a gain for the second half-month of two and one-half million parcels,
or over forty per cent. The whole number of parcels despatched
during the month was fourteen and a half million. The Post-Offica
Department has found from experience that the business done by thu
fifty largest post-offices is about one-half the postal business of the
266 Transportation and Communication [1913
entire country. There were evidently, therefore, not far from thirty
million parcels handled by the parcel post during the first month. .
The parcel post is here. Incidentally, we need not be too proud of
that fact. Forty countries of the world had the parcel post before we
did. But at last we have it; and we have begun to use it with a will.
Thirty million parcels a month is a good record, especially when it
means probably fourteen million more parcels than would have been
carried if we had continued to suck to our old fourth-class-cent-an-
ounce-four-pound-limit plan. It is a new tool, but we are learning
rapidly to use it. Already it is adopted for local deliveries by shoe
dealers, men’s furnishing stores, department stores. One big concern
in St. Louis is reported to be dispensing with three-quarters of its
delivery wagons. Department stores are also using the parcel post
for deliveries to all parts of the country.
Among the articles carried in the mee ant many of them new to
it, are pitchforks, crutches, raw oysters and clams, strawberries,
squirrels (dressed), beefsteak, umbrellas, pieces of nee Sale
of bacon, buckets of molasses, fishing rods, bricks, and eggs. A dealer
in Maryland proposes to deliver ice-cream by parcel post, and a dairy-
man to deliver cream in the same way. Brick manufacturers of the
country have sent a brick house by parcel post to the Clay Products
Exposition at Chicago. The house, it should perhaps be said, was
sent one brick at a time, each of the manufacturers contributing his
quota.
We are learning to use the parcel post, but we have a great deal
yet to learn. Old habits are hard to change, and as a people we have
a deeply ingrained habit of looking upon the post-office as an institu-
tion with the strictest limitations in regard to the sending of parcels.
We must get used to the widened limits and form the habit of taking
advantage of them. There are fascinating possibilities, many of them
in the direction of helps in solving that most vexed of problems, the
high cost of living.
May not the parcel post help to bring the farmer and the ultimate
consumer of farm products nearer together? May it not tend, if not
to the elimination of that much-objurated personage, the middle-
man, at least to bis sobering and possible reformation, through the
building up of a wholesome competition? Why should not the farmer
living within fifty miles of a city build up a trade in eggs, butter,
No. 64] Parcel Post 257
fruits, and garden “sass” to the comfort of his and his customers’
pockets as well as their palates and digestions? . .
We have the parcel post now and we shall never be without it.
As a people we are many times slow about taking a step forward,
but once it is taken, we very seldom look back and practically never
step back. But we shall probably find plenty of room for improve-
ment. Already questions are beginning to raise their heads. For in-
stance, why should a package of blank books weighing four pounds
be carried for from 5 to 30 cents within a distance of a thousand miles,
while a four-pound package of printed books costs 32 cents for car-
riage regardless of the distance? Why should the post-office be able
to carry eleven pounds of blank books and only four pounds of printed
books? ...
Let us suppose that a farmer living on a rural free delivery route
wants to send ten pounds of dried peas by mail to a friend living in
the town from which the route starts. If the peas are intended for
planting in his friend’s garden, he will pay eighty cents postage on
the parcel. If the peas, on the other hand, are intended for the con-
coction of pea soup, the postage will be fourteen cents. If the peas
are sent to a friend nearly a thousand miles away, the postage will
still be eighty cents for the peas to be planted but seventy-two cents
for the peas to be eaten. If the peas are sent from coast to coast,
the postage on the to-be-planted peas will still be eighty cents; the
postage on the to-be-made-into-soup peas will be $1.20.
If the sender does not know what his friend intends to use the peas
for, a very pretty problem will present itself to the postman and the
farmer. .
The great need in relation to the parcel post, as in relation to the
whole postal service, is simplification. We now have seven or eight
classifications of postal matter bearing different rates. There is need
for but three:
First Class. Letters and sealed matter.
Second Class. Newspapers and periodicals mailed in bulk by pub-
lishers.
Third Class. Parcels.
Such a classification would make for convenience, efficiency, and
economy... .
Until we have the postal service so organized that costs, profits
268 Transportation and Communication [1922
and losses, wastes and extravagances, can be determined quickly
and accurately, we shall have no basis for intelligent and effective
improvement. If the parcel post shall provide an incentive to such
an examination of the postal service as will make clear its defects
and its needs and shall lead to improvements in the direction of busi-
ness efficiency and extended public service, the country will have
added reason for welcoming its establishment.
Staff article, A Million a Day, in Outlook, March 15, 1913 (New York), CII,
580-585 passim.
65. The Wizardry of the Automobile (1922)
BY ALLEN D. ALBERT
Albert, the eminent editor and sociologist who wrote this account of the effect
of the widespread adoption of the automobile as a means of transportation, has
specialized since 1906 in causes of city growth and programmes of city development.
He has seen the automobile, from being a mere curiosity at the beginning of the
century, achieve a popularity such that over twenty million cars are now in use.—
For the influence of the automobile on country life, see No. 8 above. For a descrip-
tion of the modern traffic problem, see No. 99 below. For an account of automobile
manufacturing, see No. 154 below.
E have in 1921 about nine million motor-cars in the United
States, hardly a third as many as our horses. Yet I think
there can be no serious question that the motor-car has come to be
more important to us socially than the horse.
The most comprehensive change it has wrought for us has been
the general widening of the circle of our life. City folk feel this in
the evening and at the week-end. Farmer folk feel it from early
morning till bedtime every day.
Our mail comes to our R. F. D. box usually not later than eleven
in the morning, and ours is the last delivery but one on our route.
Some who work, in every town, now have year-round houses in the
country. ‘There is, in fact, a tangible and powerful movement di-
rectly opposite to that of the retired farmer. He came to town tc
rest; city folk are going to the country to rest, and in the era of the
No. 65] The Wizardry of the Automobile 269
automobile they do not lose the diversions that appealed so strongly
to the retired farmer. .
We may expect these new country homes to affect the quality of
American farm life positively and fundamentally. It is the younger
generation of business men who are building country houses outside
our smaller cities, and wherever they build they are enlivening the
countryside with visiting, and landscape gardening, and the giving of
partiess srs
There are absorbing stories in the rusty little cars parked these
days before the high school in the county-seat. This one brings two
brothers eleven miles from a farm where neither parent had more than
four months of schooling in any year or passed beyond the sixth grade.
This one bears the daughter of a dairyman, who tells you with a
steady look into your eyes that she has never learned to milk and
never intends to learn. This one picks up the high-school students of
three families from Wintergreen Bottoms, a community hopelessly
sullen and lawless unless its children save it.
Farm men race to town to meetings of the farm bureau; farm
women to meetings of the domestic-science clubs; all of them to
the circus or the movies; or the winter concert season. In our youth
such expeditions would have required half a day in travel. In
our motoring middle life they require less than half an hour each
way.
We have the doctor within easy call. We can patronize the steam
laundry. Our butter and poultry customers do their own delivering.
In some of the older farming sections now, as in most of the new, some
of us whose children have absorbed high-school standards find our-
selves joining the country club and playing golf in hours when our
fathers would have been chopping feed or mending fence. . . .
I wish I could believe that our new ease of transportation had
strengthened the church by widening the radius of its service. Some
of our farmer families do in fact drive eight or ten miles to worship,
but not many of them. And as an offset to these few, any town
clergyman can cite the loss of leading families of city members who
automobile away most of the Sunday mornings excepting Easter.
. . . Without the automobile or some similar new agent of transport,
probably we never could have had any advance in co-operation so
worth while as the farm bureau, the woman’s club, the parent-teacher
270 Transportation and Communication [1922
association. The motor-carriage isolates us as it transports us but it
gives us more of fellowship at the end of the journey.
The point is that the cost of a such a gain should be paid knowingly
and kept as low as possible. Our car-owners who take no part in
community movements are making the community poorer by paying
the cost without any compensating gain. And I, for one, do not
expect it ever to be established that the welfare of any such community
movement necessarily involves the weakening of the church... .
The same machine that hurries the surgeon to the bedside of the
child with a broken foot will hurry the yeggman in his getaway from
a hold-up. The boy who acts the pig in his home will not suddenly
become considerate of others when given absolute control of a vehicle
swifter and heavier than the others on the street. Traffic squads
are already making his control far from absolute in the more travelled
thoroughfares. Within such limits it is to be expected that he and his
highwayman associates will shortly be checked by some device that
will stop all vehicular movement within a fixed limit on the sounding
of an alarm. The car that persists in shooting ahead will thus be
brought into clear view, while if the joyrider or the thief stopped with
the others ordinarily, he would only await capture.
In the country the control must come by other methods. State
constabulary is the means most often urged. What the “Mounted”
do in Canada and the State police in New York and Pennsylvania,
it is argued, can be done on a larger scale for the making safe of our
country roads.
Present systems, headed by sheriffs and manned by constables,
are for practical uses of patrol, non-existent. The plain truth is that
on this continent there are only small areas in which the rural high-
ways are not totally undefended against wrongdoers. . .
Electric interurbans are holding their own against the new compe-
tition somewhat better than the steam roads; but not invariably, and
not on many routes with success to warrant hope of any imminent
extensions.
General touring by motor-car has, of course, only begun. It must
be expected to double and quadruple within a few seasons. Its in-
crease will include a series of social changes of the greatest interest
to those who love the picturesque.
Most of our municipalities will have auto camps by to-morrow.
No. 66] Road Improvement arr
The wayside inn is even now being restored to its prominence of stage-
coach days. Those who have seen the blackboards in front of farm-
houses may share my expectation of an important if not a radical
short-circuiting of present methods in marketing farm produce.
Best of all and most important of all, we shall steady down as a
people more and more out of our rushing from place to place and come
inevitably nearer, I think, to an appreciation of the beauty of the
countryside.
Allen D. Albert, The Social Influence of the Automobile, in Scribner’s Magazine,
May, 1922 (New York), LXII, 685-688.
66. Road Improvement (1924)
BY T. WARREN ALLEN AND OTHERS
The development of a federal system of highways has been part of the work of
the Bureau of Public Roads of the Department of Agriculture. Elaborate experi-
ments have been necessary to settle upon the precise kind of engineering procedure
to assure serviceable roads for every purpose without extravagance.—Bibliography:
periodicals of automobile clubs, such as The American Motorist, report almost
monthly the progress of improved highways.
rire EFORE entering into a discussion of the various types of
improvement and their purposes, there are certain widely
entertained erroneous ideas the falsity of which should be apparent.
The first is the idea that an improved road is a luxury to be enjoyed
if it can be afforded, but not essential to the economic health of the
community. It is an idea that had its origin in the early days of the
automobile when the motor vehicle was thought to be merely a toy
for the wealthy few, and road improvement was thought to be in
the interest of only this special class. Although there are now almost
enough motor vehicles in use to provide one for every family, this
erroneous idea still persists, and one often hears, in objection to a
particular proposal for road improvement, the statement that the
cost is too great, or that to undertake it would increase taxes to the
breaking point. Such statements are based upon the assumption
that improved roads are in the nature of luxuries, desirable if they can
272 Transportation and Communication [1924
be afforded but not to be considered unless there is available for
their construction a surplus of income not required for more neces-
sary things.
A brief examination of the purpose of roads and the effect of their
improvement is sufficient to dispel this false idea. A road is merely
a route over which persons and things are moved from place to place,
as in all civilized communities they must be moved. A man may
walk along it carrying his load upon his back; he may pile a larger
load upon a wagon and cause a team of horses or oxen to draw it for
him with less expenditure of labor and time; or he may now load a
motor truck with a still larger burden and move it still more rapidly.
He may content himself with the wearying, time-consuming delays
and obstructions of a rutted trail that runs up hill and down over
bowlders and through creeks, twisting and turning around every
natural obstacle, and thereby increasing the distance he must travel
in going from point to point; or he may cut the hills and fill the valleys,
and bridge the streams and straighten the course and thereby enable
himself to move a larger load in less time with the same expenditure
of effort; in other words, at the same cost. If he chooses the latter
course, a certain amount of effort is required to improve the road,
and that effort entails a certain cost, but he recognizes that the cost
of improving the road is less than the cost of toiling over it in its
unimproved condition. For the movement of every vehicle over a
road there is a certain cost, a cost which is less if the road be improved
than if it be left in a state of nature. Multiply the reduction in the
cost of operating one vehicle by the number of vehicles which use
the road in a year and the result is the greatest annual sum it is proper
to pay to improve the road and maintain it in its improved state.
It thus appears that the only limit that may properly be placed upon
the expenditure for highway improvement is the aggregate amount
of the saving in vehicular operating costs resulting from the improve-
ment, an amount which depends upon the number of vehicles using
the road. Because of the great multiplication of motor vehicles it
has now come about that the numbers of vehicles using our main
roads are so great that the accumulated savings resulting from road
improvement will more than pay the cost of the most expensive
types of road. It must be clear, therefore, that improved roads are
not a luxury to be enjoyed if we have the means and put aside if we
No. 66] Road Improvement 273
have not. The fact is that we lose more by not improving them than
it costs to improve them; so that we may say that we pay for improved
roads whether we have them or not, and we pay less if we have them
than if we have not.
The second erroneous idea is that all roads should be “hard sur-
face”; that no road improvement is worth while unless it results
in a “hard surface.” The so-called hard-surfaced roads are the con-
crete, brick, bituminous concrete, sheet asphalt, and various stone
and wood-block pavements. All of them are expensive. To insist that
all roads should be surfaced with one of these types of material would
be luxurious road making indeed. The answer to those who propose
such a plan has already been given. It has been shown that the maxi-:
mum amount which it is proper to spend for the improvement of a
given road is the sum of the individual savings accruing from the
improvement to the owners of each of the vehicles driven over it.
For, after all, those who use the roads are the citizens who pay for
them by their taxes; and we can not properly require these citizens
or road users to pay more for the building and maintenance of a road
than they recover in the way of reduced costs of vehicular operation.
Clearly what we spend for the improvement of any given road should
always be less than the sum total of savings from the improvement.
Otherwise the expenditure for the road is not a paying investment.
Fortunately it is not impossible to make a material improvement in
the condition of a road without hard-surfacing it, and these lesser
improvements are quite effective in reducing the cost of travel.
To grade and drain an unimproved road costs much less than to
hard-surface it, and substantially reduces the cost of moving vehicles:
over the road. If the vehicles that use the road are comparatively
few in number, an unsurfaced but graded and drained road can be.
maintained in satisfactory condition by dragging at very low cost.
The cost is so small that the savings accruing from the operation of
very few vehicles will more than pay it. If the number of vehicles
using the road is great enough to make it impracticable to maintain
an unsurfaced road in continuous good condition, the road may be
surfaced with sand-clay or gravel which, while it will entail an ad-
ditional expenditure for improvement, will be more: than compen-
sated for by the greater multiplication of individual operating savings
resulting from the greater traffic. In a similar manner, if the traffic
274 Transportation and Communication [1924
is heavier than a gravel road will carry, a surface of bituminous
macadam may be economically applied; and it is not until the traffic
reaches a very considerable density that one of the hard-surfaced
types is required or can be economically justified. When that point
is reached a hard-surfaced road should be built.
To build and maintain a mile of any one of these types requires a
certain annual expenditure of public funds, an expenditure which is
greater for the higher than for the lower types; but for any type the
required annual expenditure is well within the yearly savings in the
cost of operating the number of vehicles which it will carry without
destruction. From this course of reasoning it follows that all roads
should be improved to the maximum degree the traffic will justify,
but no road should be improved to an extent in excess of its earning
capacity. The return to the public in the form of economic trans-
portation is the sole measure of the worth of the improvement. Hard
surfaces are required on our main, heavily traveled thoroughfares,
but to say that all roads should be hard surfaced is merely another
way of urging expenditure in excess of income.
The third erroneous idea can be disposed of in less space than has
been required for the first two. It is that there is such a thing as a
permanent road. It is this delusion that has been responsible for
the unhealthy disregard of the maintenance of our roads in the past.
Following the will-o’-the-wisp of the ‘‘permanent road” we have in
the past allowed some of our new roads to go to pieces for lack of
necessary repair. Fortunately there is none of the State highway
departments which now suffers from this delusion. It is thoroughly
understood by these public agencies which are in charge of the more
important road work of the country that all roads, regardless of type,
gradually depreciate and wear out under the wheels of vehicles and
the action of the elements. They know that to keep a road in con-
tinuously good condition they must start maintaining it the day its
construction is completed; they know, moreover, that no matter how
well they repair it the time will come eventually when it will need an
entirely new surface, and they set aside the required sum from their
available revenues to pay for the maintenance and reconstruction
of the roads as such maintenance and reconstruction are required.
They consider this recurring expense as a part of the cost of the road
io be thrown into the balance with the construction cost and weighed
No. 67] Flivvers of the Air 275
against the multiplied operating savings in determining the type of
road to build for any given traffic condition.
T. Warren Allen and Others, Highways and Highway Transportation, in Agri-
culture Yearbook, 1924 (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1925), 109-112.
67. Flivvers of the Air (1926)
BY WILLIAM B. STOUT
Stout, after an extensive experience as engineer and designer of automobiles,
turned his attention to aircraft, and became general manager of the Stout Metal Air-
plane Company, the airplane division of the Ford Motor Company. ‘This article
suggests the probable line of development of air travel in the United States, in part
influenced, of course, by what has already been done in Europe.—Bibliography:
current periodicals.
‘WO broad general fields for the airplane are already open.
The first use and the one for which we are now fitted is the ser-
vice of the airplane as a common carrier. The second is as a personal
machine which will be as cheap, as reliable and as convenient as an
automobile.
We are already much farther along in the first field than most people
realize, while the personal plane is not far off.
No man can safely say what the eventual plane is going to look
like or what it will be able to do, and I shall not attempt to be a
prophet. There is no point in trying to be one, for the present utility
of the airplane is a big enough subject in itself.
Within a year the effects of the air travel will begin to be felt
throughout the country. We already have more planes in commer-
cial use than any other country—although not more per capita. We
have now about fifteen privately owned air lines in operation or ready
to operate as soon as planes can be had. All these lines will carry
express matter, and most of them have mail contracts.
It is becoming general for towns and cities to set up landing fields
and hangars for the free use of these companies and, what is more
important, the companies are being backed by practical business men
and bankers of sufficient means to finish what they start.
276 Transportation and Communication [1926
It is not at all unlikely that we shall soon see an air boom—like the
radio boom and the real-estate boom. It is the next thing in order.
American pilots are now flying upward of twenty thousand miles
a day over regular routes. The mail routes of the country approach
nine thousand miles. Business and banking are using the air mail
as a matter of course, and the postage, though high, is not expensive
considering the time saved. Also the private lines are being used for
jewelry and other valuable articles where the interest charge in
transit is important.
One direct result of these services will be to release a large amount
of money that is now tied up in goods in transit. Every addition te
speed in transportation tends to the lowering of prices to the con-
sumer without the producer getting less. It also brings the producer
and the consumer closer together. In addition the speed makes
available additional markets to relieve any shortage.
The passenger lines are bound to grow. Our large three-engine
machine which is already being flown does away with the possibility
of having to come down for engine trouble, since the machine will fly
on any two of the engines. Byrd’s machine on his North Pole trip
had three engines and propellers. He had some difficulties with one
engine and might have had to turn back had that been his only engine,
but with the assurance of the other two engines he was able to carry
on.
With the planes which we now have or can build, it is possible to
maintain a daily passenger service from New York to Chicago on a
six-hour schedule and from New York to San Francisco on a thirty-
hour schedule. The Chicago trip can be made without changing.
The fare need not be more than double the present railroad fare.
Starting a service to Europe is only a question of someone putting
up the money. We can build a six-engine plane, running on never
more than four engines, which will make the crossing in twenty-four
hours with great regularity, for the plane can go above or around
storms. And also it can take an absolutely direct route, winter and
summer.
A plane for this service can be built to operate at two hundred
dollars an hour, which includes depreciation and all expenses. It
would hold twenty passengers. At a fare of five hundred dollars, the
gross revenue would be ten thousand dollars a trip and the expense
No. 67] Flivvers of the Air oT
rorty-eight hundred dollars. This gives an ample margin and the
fare is only about double the best minimum passage on the fast liners.
The enterprise is both mechanically and financially feasible. . . .
Almost everyone now says flying is dangerous. The public is
suspicious of the airplane—probably because it has no visible means
of support. People were suspicious of the automobile when it first
came in, and the man who would drive one of the newfangled things
had a leg on the dare-devil cup. . . .
But when the Germans some time back had to send fifty millions
in gold to London, how did they send it? By air. Why? Because
they figured that the airplane was the safest and quickest way to get
the money across the Channel.
This is not to say that flying is perfectly safe. It is not perfectly
safe. No form of transportation is or can be absolutely safe and many
airplanes are distinctly unsafe. But the fact which few people realize
is that nowadays accidents do not happen to well-constructed planes
while they are in the air. The single point of danger is in a forced
landing on unsuitable ground. The safest position for an airplane is
high in the air, going at a speed of one hundred miles an hour or more.
A mother writing to her son in the aviation corps counseled him to
fly “low and slow.” She did not know she was advising him to kill
himself.
The old planes were dangerous in the air. They did not have the
power to make the speed necessary for control and also they did not
have the power to rise above storms and fog.
The old aviators dreaded the nose dive and the tail spin pecabss
their wings were not strong enough to stand the strain of checking
the dive or the spin. Today both the dive and the spin are recognized
parts of military flying and a plane which will not do either at the will
of the pilot would be of little use in combat.
Involuntary spins and dives can be prevented by the design—as
put into commercial planes; but no aviator now bothers about spinning
or diving, for it is as easy to get out of either as to take a motor car
out of a skid.
Storms and fog—especially fog—are still dreaded by airmen, but
no more so than by ships at sea.
In the Ford Air Service between Dearborn and Cleveland and be-
tween Dearborn and Chicago, we are experimenting with a radio
278 Transportation and Communication [1926
arrangement for guiding the pilot through the fog. If he is on the true
course he hears “Dearborn”; if he goes to the left he hears only
“Dear,” and to the right only “born.” He can keep his distance above
the earth by the instruments before him, and the radio beacon will
hold him exactly in his course.
The other large safety item—the provision of landing fields—is
equally neglected. All the present types of planes require a fairly
level open space of considerable size in which to land. As the planes
are developed, the amount of space required will be cut down, but
taking the situation as it now stands, the provision of a large number
of air ports would cut the element of danger in flying to a negligible
figure.
In Europe the air lines last year covered a distance equal to two
hundred and forty times around the earth, with casualties too few
to mention.
The government air mail, with by no means the most modern
planes, has been maintaining a service from New York to San Fran-
cisco daily both ways, and for nearly two years has been flying night
and day. In two years the day service, going under all sorts of weather
conditions, has not had a fatality. The night service has not been
so fortunate, but all its accidents have been due to the experimental
nature of night flying, which used to be thought impossible.
Two general styles of planes are now being built—the biplane and
the monoplane. Each has its advantages, for every plane is a compro-
mise. . .
I strongly favor the metal monoplane for many reasons. For in-
stance, the flow of air around the wings is not influenced by an adja-
cent wing or anything close at hand. Again, in a biplane the upper
wing lifts often two-thirds of the total load and the lower wing is
there largely for structural purposes. The entire advantage of the bi-
plane is structural, but at a great aérodynamic disadvantage.
I believe the monoplane in one form or another will entirely dis-
place the biplane for load-carrying work and eventually in practically
every field.
I was led into the thought of making a metal plane because such a
plane would not be bothered by heat or cold or any weather and might
be left out in the open for days without harm.
Going into metal meant only the monoplane with a thick wing.
No. 67] Flivvers of the Air 279
The next step was to find the metal, and finally I found duralumin,
which is a mixture of copper and aluminum and as strong as structural
steel. It is noncorrosive and so light that a plane with a sixty-foot
wing spread and capable of carrying a ton of freight weighs no more
than a first-class sedan car.
The plane being metal, it can be made with interchangeable parts
and almost entirely by machinery; thus the human element of skill
in construction is eliminated. This is a step toward the practice
followed in the manufacture of automobiles. . . .
The personal plane has not yet come into being, but it is hardly
more than five years away.
The small personal plane will carry the pilot and a passenger. It
will be small enough to be housed in any fair-sized garage, but really
will not need housing, for it will have nothing about it to be hurt by
the weather: =..
The air flivver may seem fantastic, but that is only because aviation
has been made so mysterious. This plane, as well as the larger de-
velopment of the commercial plane, will depend upon the bettering of
engine design. . . .
The airplane engine of the future will be more reliable and able to
run wide open for at least a week, day and night, without stopping,
before it can be considered reliable enough for air work; it must be
lighter than present-day engines, and air-cooled—it is as foolish to
water-cool an airplane as it is to air-cool a motor boat. .
And the landing is going to be of steadily less moment, excepting
with the large machines. It will soon be possible to land a small
plane at forty miles an hour, and stop it within the same distance
that an automobile going at that pace can stop.
William B. Stout, in The Country Gentleman, December, 1926 (Philadelphia),
14 ss. Copyright by The Curtis Publishing Co.
280 Transportation and Communication [1927
68. An Epochal Flight (1927)
BY CAPTAIN CHARLES A. LINDBERGH
Although some sixty others had preceded him in trans-Atlantic flights by air-
plane and dirigible, Lindbergh attracted unequalled attention. He was the first to
make the flight entirely alone; and his entire success in landing exactly where he
planned, as well as his youth and winning personality, made an immense impression
on the popular mind. He was promptly promoted to a colonelcy in the National
Guard.—Bibliography: Charles A. Lindbergh, We (1928); Gerald R. Gage,
“ Plucky” Lindbergh (1927); all newspapers and periodicals of the time, in which
an unprecedented amount of space was devoted to Lindbergh and his flight.
ELL, here I am in the hands of American Ambassador Her-
rick. From what I have seen of it, Iam sure I am going to
like Paris.
It isn’t part of my plans to fly back to the United States, although
that doesn’t mean I have finished my flying career. If I thought that
was going to be the result of my flight across the Atlantic, you may
be sure I would never have undertaken it. Indeed, I hope that I will
be able to do some flying over here in Europe—that is, if the souvenir
hunters left enough of my plane last night.
Incidentally, that reception I got was the most dangerous part of
the whole flight. If wind and storm had handled me as vigorously
as that Reception Committee of Fifty Thousand I would never have
reached Paris and I wouldn’t be eating a 3-o’clock-in-the-afternoon
breakfast here in Uncle Sam’s Embassy.
There’s one thing I wish to get straight about this flight. They
call me “Lucky,” but luck isn’t enough. As a matter of fact, I had
what I regarded and still regard as the best existing plane to make the
flight from New York to Paris. I had what I regard as the best engine,
and I was equipped with what were in the circumstances the best
possible instruments for making such efforts. I hope I made good use
of what I had.
That I landed with considerable gasoline left means that I had
recalled the fact that so many flights had failed because of lack of
fuel, and that was one mistake I tried to avoid.
All in all, I couldn’t complain of the weather. It wasn’t what was
predicted. It was worse in some places and better in others. In fact,
it was so bad once that for a moment there came over me the tempta-
No. 68] An Epochal Flight 281
tion to turn back. But then I figured it was probably just as bad
behind me as in front of me, so I kept on toward Paris.
As you know, we (that’s my ship and I) took off rather suddenly.
We had a report somewhere around 4 o’clock in the afternoon before
that the weather would be fine, so we thought we would try it.
We had been told we might expect good weather mostly during the
whole of the way. But we struck fog and rain over the coast not far
from the start. Actually, it was comparatively easy to get to New-
foundland, but real bad weather began just after dark, after leaving
Newfoundland, and continued until about four hours before daybreak.
We hadn’t expected that at all, and it sort of took us by surprise,
morally and physically. That was when I began to think about
turning back.
Then sleet began, and, as all aviators know, in a sleet storm one
may be forced down in a very few minutes. It got worse and worse.
There, above and below me, and on both sides, was that driving storm.
I made several detours trying to get out of it, but in vain. I flew as
low as ten feet above the water and then mounted up to ten thousand
feet. Along toward morning the storm eased off, and I came down to
a comparatively low level.
I had seen one ship just before losing sight of Newfoundland, and
I saw the glow of several others afterward through the mist and storm.
During the day I saw no ships until near Ireland.
I had, as I said, no trouble before I hit the storm I referred to. We
had taken off at 7:55 in the morning. The field was slightly damp
and soft, so the take-off was longer than it would have been other-
wise. I had no trouble getting over the houses and trees. I kept
out of the way of every obstacle and was careful not to take any
unnecessary chances. As soon as I cleared everything, the motor
was throttled down to three-fourths and kept there during the whole
flight, except when I tried to climb over the storm.
Soon after starting I was out of sight of land for 300 miles, from
Cape Cod over the sea to Nova Scotia. The motor was acting per-
fectly and was carrying well the huge load of 451 gallons of gasoline
and 20 gallons of oil, which gave my ship the greatest cruising radius
of any plane of its type.
I passed over St. John’s, N. F., purposely going out of my way a
few miles to check up. I went right through the narrow pass, going
282 Transportation and Communication [1927
down so low that it could be definitely established where I was at
that hour. That was the last place I saw before taking to the open sea.
I had made preparations before I started for a forced landing if it
became necessary, but after I started I never thought much about
the possibility of such a landing. I was ready for it, but I saw no use
thinking about it, inasmuch as one place would have been about as
good or as bad as another.
Despite the talk about my periscope, I had no trouble in regard to
visibility. The view I had on both sides was quite good enough for
navigating the ocean, and the purpose of the periscope was only to
enable me to see any obstacle directly in front of me. The periscope
was useful in starting from New York and landing in Paris. Other
than that I used it very little. I kept a map in front of me and an
instrument showing practically where I was all of the time.
Shortly after leaving Newfoundland I began to see icebergs. There
was a low fog and even through it I could make out bergs clearly. It
began to get very cold, but I was well prepared for cold. I had on
ordinary flying clothing, but I was down in the cockpit, which pro-
tected me, and I never suffered from the weather.
Within an hour after leaving the coast it became dark. Then I
struck clouds and decided to try to get over them. For a while I
succeeded, at a height of 10,000 feet. I flew at this height until early
morning. The engine was working beautifully and I was not sleepy
at all. I felt just as if I was driving a motor car over a smooth road,
only it was easier.
Then it began to get light and the clouds got higher. I went under
some and over others. There was sleet in all of those clouds and the
sleet began to cling to the plane. That worried me a great deal and
I debated whether I should keep on or go back. I decided I must
not think any more about going back. I realized that it was hence-
forth only a question of getting there. It was too far to turn back.
The engine was working perfectly and that cheered me. I was going
along a hundred miles an hour and I knew that if the motor kept on
turning I would get there. After that I thought only about navigating,
and then I thought that I wasn’t so badly off after all.
It was true that the flight was thirty-four hours long, and that at
almost any moment in it a forced landing might be what you might
call “rather interesting,” but I remembered that the flying boys I
No. 68] An Epochal Flight 283
knew back home spent some hours almost every week in bad flying
when a forced landing would have been just as bad for them as a
forced landing would have been for me. Those boys don’t get credit
for it, that’s all, and without doubt in a few years many people will
be taking just as many chances as I took.
The only real danger I had was at night. In the daytime I knew
where I was going, but in the evening and at night it was largely a
matter of guesswork. However, my instruments were so good that
I never could get more than 200 miles off my course, and that was
easy to correct, and I had enough extra gasoline to take care of a
number of such deviations. All in all, the trip over the Atlantic,
especially the latter half, was much better than I expected.
Laymen have made a great deal of the fact that I sailed without a
navigator and without the ordinary stock of navigation instruments,
but my real director was my earth inductor compass. I also had a
magnetic compass, but it was the inductor compass which guided me
so faithfully that I hit the Irish coast only three miles from the theo-
retic point that I might have hit it if I had had a navigator. I replaced
a navigator’s weight by the inductor compass. The compass behaved
so admirably that I am ashamed to hear any one talk about my luck.
Maybe I am lucky, but all the same I knew at every moment where
I was going.
The inductor compass is based on the principle of the relation
between the earth’s magnetic field and the magnetic field generated
at the compass. When the course had been set so that the needle
registered zero on this compass, any deviation, from any cause, would
cause the needle to swing away from zero in the direction of the error.
By flying the plane with the needle at an equal distance on the other
side of zero and for about the same time the error had been committed,
the plane would be back on her course again. This inductor compass
was so accurate that I really needed no other guide.
Fairly early in the afternoon I saw a fleet of fishing boats. On
some of them I could see no one, but on one of them I saw some men
and flew down, almost touching the craft and yelled at them, asking
if I was on the right road to Ireland.
They just stared. Maybe they didn’t hear me. Maybe I didn’t
hear them. Or maybe they thought I was just a crazy fool.
An hour later I saw land. I have forgotten just what time it was.
284 Transportation and Communication [1927
It must have been shortly before 4 o’clock. It was rocky land and all
my study told me it was Ireland. And it was Ireland!
I slowed down and flew low enough to study the land and be sure
of where I was; and, believe me, it was a beautiful sight. It was the
most wonderful looking piece of natural scenery I have ever beheld.
After I had made up my mind that it was Ireland, the right place
for me to strike rather than Spain or some other country, the rest was
child’s play. I had my course all marked out carefully from approx-
imately the place where I hit the coast, and you know it is quite easy
to fly over strange territory if you have good maps and your course
prepared.
I flew quite low over Ireland to be seen, but apparently no great
attention was paid to me. I also flew low over England, mounted a
little over the Channel and then came down close to land when I
passed a little west of Cherbourg. From Cherbourg I headed for the
Seine and followed it up-stream.
I noticed it gets dark much later over here than in New York and
I was thankful for that. What especially pleased me was the ease
with which I followed my course after hitting the coast of Ireland.
When I was about half an hour away from Paris I began to see
rockets and Very lights sent up from the airfield, and I knew I was all
right.
I saw an immense vertical electric sign, which I made out to be
the Eiffel Tower. I circled Paris once and immediately saw Le Bourget
[the aviation field], although I didn’t know at first what it was. I
saw a lot of lights, but in the dark I couldn’t make out any hangars.
I sent Morse signals as I flew over the field, but no one appears to
have heard them. The only mistake in all my calculations was that
I thought Le Bourget was northeast rather than east of Paris.
Fearing for a moment that the field I had seen—remember that
I couldn’t see the crowd—was some other airfield than Le Bourget,
I flew back over Paris to the northwest, looking for Le Bourget. I
was slightly confused by the fact that whereas in America when a
ship is to land, beacons are put out when floodlights are turned on, at
Le Bourget both beacons and floodlights were going at the same
time.
I was anxious to land where I was being awaited. So when I didn’t
find another airfield, I flew back toward the first lights I had seen,
No. 68] An Epochal Flight 285
and flying low I saw the lights of numberless automobiles. I decided
that was the right place, and I landed.
I appreciated the reception which had been prepared for me, and
had intended taxiing up to the front of the hangars, but no sooner had
my plane touched the ground than a human sea swept toward it.
I saw there was danger of killing people with my propeller, and I
quickly came to a stop.
That reception was the most dangerous part of the trip. Never
in my life have I seen anything like that human sea. It isn’t clear to
me yet just what happened. Before I knew it I had been hoisted out
of the cockpit, and one moment was on the shoulders of some men and
the next moment on the ground.
It seemed to be even more dangerous for my plane than for me.
I saw one man tear away the switch and another took something out
of the cockpit. Then, when they started cutting pieces of cloth from
the wings, I struggled to get back to the plane, but it was impossible.
A brave man with good intentions tried to clear a way for me with
aclub. Swinging the club back, he caught me on the back of the head.
It isn’t true that I was exhausted. I was tired, but I wasn’t ex-
hausted.
Several French officers asked me to come away with them and I
went, casting anxious glances at my ship. I haven’t seen it since,
but I am afraid it suffered. I would regret that very much because
I want to use it again.
But I must remember that crowd did welcome me. Good Lord!
There must have been a million of them. Other men will fly the
Atlantic as I did, but I think it safe to guess that none of them will
get any warmer reception than I got.
Finally I got to Ambassador Herrick’s house and I have certainly
been all right since then. . .
I didn’t bring any extra clothes with me. I am wearing a borrowed
suit now. It was a case of clothes or gasoline, and I took the gasoline.
T have a check on a Paris bank and am going to cash it tomorrow
morning, buy shirts, socks and other things. I expect to have a good
time in Paris.
But I do want to do a little flying over here.
Charles A. Lindbergh, in The New York Times, May 23, 1927; copyright by
The New York Times Company, and reprinted by permission.
CHAPTER XIV—NATIONAL FINANCE
69. The Liberty Loan (1917)
BY SECRETARY WILLIAM GIBBS McADOO
McAdeo, a lawyer and railroad man by profession, was Secretary of the Treasury
(1913-1918) and Director-General of Railways (1917—1919) under the Wilson ad-
ministration. This is part of one of the addresses made by him as Secretary of the
Treasury, in the effort to crystallize public sentiment in support of the First Liberty
Loan. Before the war was over, a tremendous organization of bankers and finan-
ciers had been assembled to solve the financial problems involved.—Bibliography:
Harvey E. Fisk, Our Public Debt, an Historical Sketch with a Description of the United
States Securities (1919); Alexander D. Noyes, Financial Chapters of the War (1916);
Noyes, The War Period of American Finance, 1918-1925 (1926); Dewey, Financial
History of the United States; American Academy of Political and Social Science, Fi-
nancing the War (1918); Jacob H. Hollander, War Borrowing (1919); Ernest L. Bo-
gart, War Costs and their Financing (1921).
ARS can not be fought without money. The very
first step in this war, the most effective step that we
could take, was to provide the money for its conduct. The Congress
quickly passed an act authorizing a credit of $5,000,000,000, and
empowered the Secretary of the Treasury , with the approval of the
President, to extend to the allied Governments making war with us
against the enemies of our country, credits not exceeding $3,000,000,-
ooo. Since that law was passed—it was only passed on the 24th of
April, less than a month ago—the financial machinery of your Gov-
ernment has been speeded up to top notch to give relief to the allies
in Europe, in order that they might be able to make their units in
the trenches, their machinery which is there on the ground, tell to
the utmost, and tell, if possible, so effectively that it might not be
necessary to send American soldiers to the battle fields. As a result,
we have already extended in credits to these Governments—Great
Britain, France, Italy, Russia, and Belgium—something like $745,-
000,000, and we shall have to extend before this year is out, if the war
lasts that long, not $3,000,000,000 of credits, but probably five billions
or six billions. But it makes no difference how much credit we extend,
286
No. 69] The Liberty Loan 287
we are extending it for a service which is essential, as I said before,
for your own protection, if no other grave issues were involved in this
struggle.
This initial financing was not an easy thing to do. The Congress
authorized the Secretary of the Treasury to issue, in addition to
bonds, $3,000,000,000 of one-year debt certificates. Their purpose
is to bridge over any chasms, so to speak, so that if the Treasury is
short at any time, because of extraordinary demands, we can sell
these temporary certificates, supply the need, and then sell bonds to
take up these certificates. We have been selling temporary debt
certificates in anticipation of the sale of these Liberty bonds. The
first issue of bonds,—$2,000,000,000,—has not been determined by any
arbitrary decision or judgment; it has been determined by the actual
necessities of the situation. It is the least possible sum that we can
afford to provide for the immediate conduct of the war. We are try-
ing to spread the payment for the bonds over as large a period as
possible, so that there shall be no interference with business. This
money is not going to be taken out of the country. All of this financ-
ing is largely a matter of shifting credits; it is not going to involve any
loss of gold; it is not going to involve any loss of values. These moneys
are going to be put back into circulation, put back promptly into the
channels of business and circulated and recirculated to take care of
the abnormal prosperity of the country, a prosperity that will be
greater in the present year than ever before in our history. As we
sell these bonds we take back from the foreign governments, under
the terms of the act, their obligations, having practically the same
maturity as ours, bearing the same rate of interest as ours, so that as
their obligations mature the proceeds will be employed to pay off the
obligations issued by this Government to provide them with credit.
So you can see, fellow citizens, that in extending credit to our allies
we are not giving anything to them. So far as that is concerned, for
the purposes of this war, I would be willing to give them anything to
gain success, but they don’t ask that. They are glad and grateful
that the American Government is willing to give them the benefit of
its matchless credit, a credit greater and stronger than any nation
on the face of the globe. We give them credit at the same price our
Government has to pay you, its people, for the use of the money,
because we do not want to make any profit on our allies. We do not
288 National Finance [1917
want to profit by the blood that they must shed upon the battle field
in the same cause in which we are engaged.
What can you do to make this loan a success? You have got to
work, gentlemen, to make this loan a success. America never before
was offered a $2,000,000,000 issue of bonds. This Government never
has had to borrow so much money at one time. The money is in the
country and can be had if you men will simply say that the Govern-
ment can have it. The annual increase of our wealth is estimated
to be fifty billions of dollars. You are asked not to give anything
to your Government, but merely to invest 4 per cent of the annual
increase of wealth in this country, to take back from your Govern-
ment the strongest security on the face of God’s earth, and to receive
in return for it 314 per cent per annum, exempted from all taxation,
with the further provision that if the Government issues any other
bonds during the period of this war at a higher rate of interest than
3% per cent every man who has bought a 3% per cent bond may turn
it in and get a new bond at the higher rate of interest. Could any-
thing be fairer than that? Could anything be more secure than an
obligation of your Government, an obligation backed not alone by
the honor of the American people—which of itself is sufficient—but
backed also by the resources of the richest nation in the world, a
nation whose aggregate wealth to-day is two hundred and fifty billions
of dollars; so that you take no risk, my friends, in buying these
bonds.
This bond offering is not going to be successful of its own momentum.
Every man and woman in this country must realize that the first
duty they can perform for their country is to take some of these bonds.
Those who are not able to take some of these bonds ought to begin sav-
ing monthly to take some of them; and if they can not save monthly,
or at all, they ought to make some man or woman who is able to
take some of these bonds subscribe. If you do that, my friends,
this first issue of $2,000,000,000 will be largely oversubscribed. It
depends, however, upon you. Your Government can not do what
you can do for your Government. A government is not worth a conti-
nental unless it has the support of the people of the country. And
one thing that makes me glad—I ought not to be glad that there is
a war—but I can not help feeling a certain amount of reverent ela-
tion that God has called us to this great duty, not alone to vindicate
No. 70] Benefits of the Budget 289
the ideals that inspire us but also because it has, for the time being,
eliminated detestable partisanism from our national life and made
us one solid people. As one people, my friends, with such an ideal,
the Republic is invincible and irresistible, and there can be no doubt
whatever of the outcome. I want you to give a thunderous reply
on the 15th of June—Liberty bond subscription day—to the enemies
of your country.
William Gibbs McAdoo, Address at a meeting of business men and bankers of
Towa, in Des Moines, May 21, 1917. Senate Document No. 40, 65th Congress, rst
Session (Washington, Covernment Printing Office, 1917), 6-8.
— eo
70. Benefits of the Budget (1922)
BY DIRECTOR CHARLES G. DAWES
Dawes, a Chicago banker, was the first Director of the Bureau of the Budget,
the aim of which was to put government expenditures on a truly business basis.
His name was given to the “Dawes Plan” for German reparations payments (1924)
in the formulation of which he had a part. and on account of which he was awarded
a half of the Nobel Peace Prize for 1926. In 1924 he was elected Vice-President of
the United States and promptly announced plans for the revision of the rules of
debate governing the Senate. In 1929 he was appointed Ambassador to Great
Britain.—Bibliography: Rufus C. Dawes, The Dawes Plan in the Making (1925);
George P. Auld, The Dawes Plan and the New Economics (1927); Carl Bergmann,
The History of Reparations (1927).
3 HE budget law is the product of nonpartisanship in
Congress. In the first year’s work of the budget, mem-
bers of both parties, in Congress and out, have earnestly contributed
time and effort to the furthering of its efficiency. It has no admin-
istrative functions. It is a small organization, consisting of the Di-
rector of the Budget, the assistant director, four advisers of the
director’s selection, to be compensated at the rate of $6,000 per year,
the balance of the organization being secured under civil service
rules at salaries not exceeding $5,000 per year. The major part of
its force is engaged in gathering and compiling information from the
departments, upon which advice to the Executive may be based
not only as to the money which will be required in the operations of
Government, but as to how it can be more economically and eff-
290 National Finance [1922
ciently expended to carry out the policies imposed by higher legisla-
tive and executive authority. ...
The results accomplished, while primarily due to this Executive
pressure, could not have been achieved without the codperation of
the rank and file of Government employees who have commendably
responded to the directions of the President as transmitted to them
by the heads of the departments and establishments. Numerous
examples of the interest and ingenuity which have been exhibited by
the individual employee in office and field have come to the attention
of this office, and this spirit, no less than that of the head of the de-
partment or establishment, has been a factor contributing to the
savings accomplished.
In treating governmental business questions the clarifying method
is always reached through the adoption of the point of view which
would be taken in a private enterprise confronting analogous ques-
tions in its business. The idea that governmental business can be
successfully administered under a different set of principles or different
methods than private business is a fallacy which has already cost
this Government too dearly to be further encouraged as a basis for
partisan discussion.
An appropriation by Congress is simply an authorization of ex-
penditure. If Congress overestimates the necessity for expenditure
and makes an overappropriation it does not necessarily follow that
the unspent portion of an appropriation is a real saving. On the
other hand, if Congress underestimates the necessity for expenditure
in its appropriations it does not follow that an excess expenditure by
a department is necessarily an evidence of extravagance. Where a
portion of a given appropriation is unspent it may indicate a saving,
provided the money was unspent because of more economical and
efficient functioning of a governmental activity. In like manner,
where, in expenditure, a fixed congressional appropriation has been
exceeded, it may represent extravagance if the excess expenditure
was occasioned by the inefficient functioning of a governmental
activity.
Indirect savings, resulting from such improvements in the functiou-
ing of governmental business activities as make unnecessary the
expenditure of money which otherwise would have to be appropriated
by Congress, must be determined by consideration of the facts, with-
No. 70] Benefits of the Budget 201
out any reference whatever to the subject of congressional appropria~
tions. The question of the relation of appropriations to the subject
of real savings is only incidental as being one of the factors discussed
in consideration of the actual facts relating to the savings under dis-
cussion. If the only factor to be considered in estimating real savings
was the relation of actual expenditures to the appropriation program
outlined by Congress all it would be necessary to do to apparently
save money would be, at the beginning of any fiscal year, to make ap-
propriations so large that under no possibility could all of them be
spent and thereby, at the end of the year, “save” the unspent por-
tion of the appropriation, incidentally avoiding any deficiency appro-
priation. Deficiency appropriations, therefore, are not necessarily the
evidence of extravagance, nor is the unspent portion of appropria-
tions necessarily an evidence of economy.
In a private business fixed appropriations are always considered as
the maximum of the amount of money to be spent in administration,
never the minimum, as has been the case in Government. While
in private business appropriation limitations are imposed to check
extravagance, they are not allowed to operate either to prevent
economy or to destroy efficiency. Appropriation limits in congres-
sional efforts to secure real economy in administration in the past
have failed, because the departments, unsubjected to Executive
pressure, have organized themselves to spend the maximum amount
appropriated and then, up to this year, have practically relaxed
efforts to save under it. An authorized standard of expenditures in
Government, based upon appropriations, without intervening Exec-
utive supervision, is fatal to economy. From the beginning of our
Government, for proper business administration, there should have
been interposed, as there is at the present time, Executive control
and Executive responsibility over the business organization, and
between the business organization and the congressional appropriating
power.
This report is an effort to determine what the real savings of Gov-
ernment have been during the current fiscal year. Economies and
savings will be estimated as similar ones would be in private business
organization—by consideration of the facts which are involved. . . .
The estimates of this report relate to the largest business in the
world, conducted over a great territory. The machinery of investiga-
292 National Finance [z922
tion is limited, and even were it not limited the short time available
for preparation involves the liability of some error in estimates. The
governmental business machine has, for the present fiscal year, func-
tioned with a sense of responsibility to a central control, with result-
ing marked improvement, the full extent of which can only be devel-
oped by time.
The Bureau of the Budget is an impersonal, impartial, and non-
partisan business agent. In this particular report where its estimates
may become a basis of contention in an approaching political contest,
its figures should be conservative and meet the test of examination,
not only in the present but in the future when existing partisan
differences are forgotten and the record for impartiality and non-
partisanship of the Budget Bureau is considered in retrospect by the
unprejudiced mind of the governmental economist and student. It
will be noted from the table covering gross expenditures and esti-
mates that the Director of the Budget, out of total estimated expend-
itures of $3,922,372,030 for 1922, classifies only $1,765,875,672 as
being generally subject to Executive control in the operation of the
routine business of Government. These figures compare with actual
expenditures under the same categories in 1921 of $2,673,435,079.77,
segregated out of a total expenditure for 1921 of $5,538,040,689.30.
The reduction in the ordinary expenditures for the operation of the
routine business of Government generally subject to Executive con-
trol over governmental expenditures in 1922 is estimated by the Di-
rector of the Budget in this report at the lesser sum of $250,134,385.03.
He feels reasonably assured that this estimate of economies and sav-
ings attributable to the new system is an underestimate, but that if
an error has been made in this regard the savings and economies are
still so large as to vindicate it, and will at the same time emphasize
the indispensable policy of the Budget Bureau to have its estimates
conformable to the principles of business conservatism. In these
figures the Director of the Budget has found it impossible to make
any reliable estimate of some indefinite general savings, such as those
incident to the corrected system of purchasing which has been estab-
lished in the Government, by which competition between departments
and the overlapping and acquiring of unnecessary surplus has been
avoided. On the basis of the original estimates made by the different
departments and establishments there have been eliminated, after
No. 71] Our War Debtors 293
due consideration of the facts involved, in the neighborhood of $150,-
000,000 claimed economies.
Charles G. Dawes, Report of the Director of the Bureau of the Budget, May 8, 1922
(Washington, Government Printing Office, 1922), 3-5 passim.
71. Our War Debtors (1922)
FROM THE NEW REPUBLIC
This editorial is based on the views of Herbert Hoover, later President of the United
States, whose sound knowledge of economics and personal familiarity with Euro-
pean conditions qualified him to analyze the situation. For Hoover, see No. 200
below.—Bibliography: Harvey E. Fisk, The Inter-Ally Debts: an Analysis of War
and Post-War Public Finance, 1914-1923 (1924); Harold G. Moulton and Leo
Pasvolsky, World-War Debt Settlements (1926); John F. Bass and H. G. Moulton,
America and the Balance Sheet of Europe (1922); National Industrial Conference
Board, The Inter-Ally Debts and the United States (1925).
N the economics of the Allied debts Mr. Hoover has spoken with
characteristic vigor. The debts are not the crushing burden
that advocates of cancellation are in the habit of considering them.
Three hundred and fifty millions a year from our Continental debtors
would represent only a minute fraction of their total national incomes,
and only from two to twelve per cent of their actual budgets. There
is not one of them that does not waste a larger percentage in military
parading or other pernicious extravagance. Neither is there any
financial impracticability in finding $350,000,000 in bills of exchange
to be transmitted to America. In the long run there will be plenty
of paper to be found, drawn against American tourist expenditures,
American investments abroad and American tropical imports. Fi-
nally, the notion that we should be injured by the influx of goods in
payment of the debts is a pure delusion. We can take a modest sum
like that in goods that do not compete with our own productions.
Mr. Hoover could have made his case even stronger if he had not been
the spokesman of a high tariff administration. Even if the $350,000,-
ooo were sent here in the form of goods competing with our own
products, the volume is too insignificant to affect prices or employ-
ment appreciably. We consume at least thirty-five billions of such
294 National Finance [1922
goods, one hundred times the assumed import. Besides, since the
$350,000,000 would be gratis, it would not reduce by one dollar the
purchasing power to be applied to domestic products. And it is this
purchasing power which sustains prices.
Mr. Hoover has performed a valuable service for American intelli-
gence in clearing away some of the cobwebs that have accumulated
around the debt problem. But a demonstration of the abstract
feasibility of debt payment does not bring us appreciably nearer to
practical results. European opinion as reflected by the press is as
firmly convinced as ever of the impossibility of payment. European
economists do not believe that the debts will ever be paid. Nor do
we see how Mr. Hoover can believe it.
For the European nations, though they may be individually sane
in their policies, are collectively mad, and that collective madness
stands in the way of the economic recovery which must precede
debt payment. It is collective madness which has saddled upon a
depleted and impoverished Europe military establishments actually
larger and more costly than those under which the continent groaned
in its pre-war strength. It is collective madness which makes every
state adopt a menacing attitude toward its neighbor, to the disturb-
ance of all orderly economic and social development. It is collective
madness which has multiplied customs barriers and embargo lines
when the obvious need of the times is the freest practicable movement
of trade.
It is easy to speculate about collective interests, but not very
profitable. For there is no collective Europe, but a group of intensely
competitive states, each forced to look chiefly to itselt for security
and even existence. France spends an excessive part of her income
on soldiering. How could she do otherwise? She fears Germany,
and with good reason, for however broken down and friendless the
Germans may be now, history is a long story, and may some day give
Germary a chance to avenge on France the injuries that France,
England and America inflicted on her. In the present state of world
organization France is far from safe. Armed as she is at present,
she is not so safe as America would be if she had not one soldier, not
one ship. And does anyone here propose to save $350,000,000 a year
by utterly abolishing our army and navy?
Poland menaces Russia and Russia menaces Poland. Collectively
No. 71] Our War Debtors 295
that is idiotic. But has Russia any guarantee against Polish aggres-
sion except her power to inspire a wholesome fear in the Poles? Has
Poland any different guarantee of her continued independence?
Czecho-Slovakia is pursuing a policy of extreme protection designed
incidentally to ruin the industries of Austria, potentially a valuable
customer and supporter. Why should she not, in a world where
industrial power and national security go hand in hand? American
industry could better do entirely without customs duties than any of
the succession states im Central Europe could forego customs rates
that are destructive of the collective interest. How many American
industrialists, or statesmen, even, are out for absolute free trade?
Now, so long as the collective madness of Europe persists, no nation
will scamp its expenditures for defence, for military railroads and
highways, for industrial subsidies, in order to pay its debts to America.
No nation will add to the burden under which its taxpayers are stag-
gering for any such purpose. It is not that the nations of Europe
are insensitive to the point of honor—assuming that they regard the
American claims as debts of honor, which is unlikely. No political
party can govern if it taxes too heavily or strips the country of national
defences. Has anyone heard of a party in France or Italy, Poland or
Jugoslavia or Czecho-Slovakia which is aiming at power on a platform
of debt payment?
Whatever helps to restore sanity to Europe brings debt payment
nearer, or what is far more important, brings Europe nearer to the
point where she can take her proper place in world trade. Did Mr.
Hoover’s speech make any such contribution to European sanity?
That has not been its immediate effect. On the contrary, the effect
on the debtor states has been to strengthen the absurd belief that
America has, and has had, no other interest in European welfare than
self-interest. Apparently it has strengthened the French determina-
tion to proceed drastically to collect what she can from Germany.
It has by no means lightened the fear in France and Italy that francs
and lire may presently plunge to the abyss after the marks and
kronen and rubles.
But Mr. Hoover was not primarily concerned, we surmise, with
the immediate effect upon European public sentiment. As a member
of the commission charged with the refunding of the Allied debts,
he may be in a position to exert a considerable influence upon European
296 National Finance [1924
policy. If the European negotiators believed that the debts had
already been virtually cancelled by American popular opinion, they
would be disposed both to resist any movement toward fixing definite
conditions for payment and to reject forthwith any proposal for the
consideration of policies conducive to peace and international pros-
perity. The attitude of the bankers’ convention may have given our
debtors a mistaken view of American leniency. It was essential to
our future diplomatic action that Mr. Hoover should correct any such
misapprehension.
Whether America can exert any influence upon European policy
at this late date is somewhat doubtful. If she can, her best leverage
consists of the debts. And it cannot be made too plain to Europe
that we regard those debts as valid and binding.
Editorial, Hoover on the Debts, in New Republic (New York, 1922), XXXII, 234-
235.
a
72. Federal Farm Loans (1924)
BY NILS A. OLSEN AND OTHERS
The system of Federal Farm Loans was a device to ameliorate the financial dif-
ficulties of agriculture. As this description shows, its machinery is somewhat com-
plicated, and the formalities necessary to borrow in this way have doubtless operated
to limit its use. Olsen is associated with the Bureau of Agricultural Economics of
the Department of Agriculture.—Bibliography: Herbert Myrick, Rural Credits
System for the United States.
TER FARM mortgage credit system which would more ade-
quately serve the needs of farmers was created by the
Federal farm loan act in 1916. This measure provides for two classes
of credit institutions—the Federal land banks, which operate under
Government direction and supervision, and the joint-stock land
banks, which are privately owned and managed institutions but
operate under the supervision of the Federal Government. The
general direction of the Federal farm loan system is in the hands of
the Federal Farm Loan Board. This board is composed of seven
members, six of whom are appointed by the President with the advice
and consent of the Senate. The Secretary of the Treasury is chairman
ex officio of the board. This board exercises careful supervision over
No. 72] Federal Farm Loans 297
the activities of both Federal and joint-stock land banks. It gives
special attention to the adequacy of security taken for the funds
advanced, as well as to the marketing of the bonds through which
tunds for making loans are obtained.
For the purpose of administering the Federal land banks the coun-
try has been divided into 12 districts, each of which is served by one
bank. Each bank had originally a paid-up capital stock of $750,000.
The total original capital stock of the 12 banks was therefore, $9,000,-
000, of which $8,892,130 was subscribed by the United States Treas-
ury. The law provided that the capital stock subscribed by the
Government should be gradually retired through repurchase by the
local national farm loan associations. By December 31, 1924, seven
of the banks had completely repaid their capital stock, and the five
remaining banks had outstanding the sum of $1,670,965 of the original
stock subscribed by the Treasury.
The Federal land banks were in the beginning managed by five
directors appointed by the Federal Farm Loan Board. At the time
the original act was passed it was the intention that the control of
each bank should pass to the borrowers as soon as the subscription
to the stock amounted to $100,000. Control should then be vested
in nine directors, six of whom were to be chosen to represent the
public interest. From an early date, however, it was felt by the board
that the control of the Federal land banks by borrowers would be
unwise. The codperative features of the system did not develop as
expected. Once their loans were obtained, borrowers often ceased
to participate actively in the work of the local farm loan associations.
It was also believed that farmer control of the banks would interfere
with the sale of bonds in adequate volume. An amendment was
accordingly passed in 1923 which gives the Federal Loan Board at
least as much control over the Federal land bank directors as that of
the local associations. This amendment provides for seven directors.
The Federal Farm Loan Board appoints three district directors and
the national farm loan associations elect three local directors. The
seventh member, who is a director at large, is appointed by the board
‘rom the three persons obtaining the greatest number of votes for
director at large from the associations. It is thus apparent that the
original plan to make the Federal land banks strictly codperative
institutions has not been realized.
208 National Finance [t924
The Federal land banks operate locally through national farm loan
associations, which were intended to be the active part of the system.
These associations may be organized by 10 or more farmers desiring
loans amounting to at least $20,000 and are chartered by the Federal
Farm Loan Board. At the present time over 4,600 national farm loan
associations have been organized in all parts of the country. Prac-
tically every county in the United States is now served by one or
more of these associations. .. .
The Federal land banks make loans only to actual farmers or to
those who intend to become farmers. With few exceptions these
loans are made through local national farm loan associations. Every
borrower is required to subscribe to the extent of 5 per cent of his
loan in the stock of the local national farm loan association. The
association in turn must subscribe to an equal amount in the stock
of the Federal land bank. Every borrower is liable to twice the
amount of his stock for losses that may be incurred by the associa-
tion.
Originally the maximum loan that could be made by the Federal
land banks was $10,000. By an amendment passed in March, 1923,
the maximum was raised to $25,000. The average size of loans made
since the organization of the system to date is $3,065. The largest
loans have been made in Iowa, where they average $7,509, and the
smallest in Arkansas, where they average $1,706. These loans can
be made up to 50 per cent of the appraised value of the land plus 20
per cent of the appraised value of the insured permanent improve-
ments. In no case can the loan exceed $100 per acre. The final
appraisals on which these loans are based are made by special land-
bank appraisers, appointed by the Federal Farm Loan Board. Under
the act the land must be appraised on the basis of its value for agri-
cultural purposes and its earning power. These appraisals in the past
have been conservatively made, and this fact no doubt has contributed
to the growing popularity of the Federal farm loan bonds. The interest
rate on Federal farm loans may not exceed 6 per cent and may be
even lower, depending upon the rate paid on the bonds. Loans may
be made for terms ranging from 5 to 4o years at the option of the bor-
rower. Most of them, however, are made for terms ranging from 33
to 35 years. At the end of five years all or a part of the loan may be
repaid. Payments are made on the amortization plan, whereby
No. 72] Federal Farm Loans 299
annual or semiannual installments are paid covering the interest and
a part of the principal until the loan is liquidated. . . .
The Federal land banks began their operations in the fall of 1917.
Their growth was fairly rapid until the summer of 1919, when court
action was brought to test the constitutionality of the Federal farm
loan act. In the spring of 1921 the act was declared constitutional,
and from then on the system grew rapidly.
During the two years 1918-1919 an average of $128,636,000 in loans
were closed annually; in the two following years the annual average
dropped to $81,942,000. With the full resumption of their activities
in 1921 a large demand for loans developed, and during the three
years 1922-1924 an annual average of $193,999,000 loans were closed.
This record is splendid evidence of the manner in which the Federal
land banks responded to the needs of the farmer during the years of
depression. Since 1924 there has been a decline in the volume of
loans made by the banks, which reflects a decreasing demand for farm
mortgage credit. The Federal land banks in a very short time have
become leading sources of farm mortgage credit. In January, 1920,
it is estimated that their loans amounted to 3.7 per cent of the total
farm mortgage debt, as compared with over 9 per cent in January,
1924.
The loans of the Federal land banks are distributed quite uni-
formly over the entire country. In fact, the Federal land banks have
been especially helpful in accommodating farmers in regions where
other agencies have supplied such credit in inadequate amounts and
often at high costs. The Federal land banks thus have been one of
the most important channels through which capital could flow freely
into regions most in need of such credit. . . .
While the Federal land banks perhaps have not materially aided
the landless farmer, they have helped to reduce and equalize interest
rates and have assisted farmers in refunding their debts on more
favorable terms. It should no longer be necessary for the farmer to
have his mortgage credit in the form of short-term loans, subject to
frequent renewals. With the advent of long-time amortized loans
such as are made by the Federal land banks, the danger of foreclosure
in time of depression no doubt will be greatly reduced.
The Federal farm loan act also provided for land banks organized
and owned by lenders. These banks are known as joint-stock land
300 National Finance [1924
banks. While they are privately organized and managed institutions,
they also operate under the supervision of the Federal Farm Loan
Board. A joint-stock land bank may be organized by ro or more
persons with a minimum capital stock of $250,000. The plan under
which they are operated is very similar to that of the Federal land
banks. ...
At the time the Federal farm loan act was passed it was thought
the joint-stock land banks would play only a minor rôle in financing the
mortgage credit needs of the farmer. As a matter of fact, the growth
of such banks in the early years of the system was slow. By Novem-
ber 30, 1918, only nine joint-stock land banks had been organized,
and further development was practically stopped when the consti-
tutionality of the act was challenged. Since the constitutionality of
the act was set at rest the development of joint-stock land banks has
been very rapid... .
At the beginning of this year there were 64 joint-stock land banks
operating in most sections of the country. The major portion of
their loans, however, are being made in the better farming regions.
This is somewhat in contrast to the policy of the Federal land banks,
the loans of which are more uniformly distributed over the entire
country. It is also significant that the loans made by the joint-stock
land banks are materially larger than those of the Federal land banks.
Since their organization the loans of the joint-stock land banks have
averaged $7,714, compared with an average of $3,065 for the Federal
land banks. The joint-stock land banks, as previously stated, are
permitted to make loans up to $50,000, and this no doubt has been
an advantage in their competition with the Federal land banks.
Nils A. Olsen and Others, Farm Credit, in Agriculture Yearbook, 1924 (Washing-
ton, Government Printing Office, 1925), 198-208 passim.
No. 73] The Federal Reserve System 301
73. The Federal Reserve System (1926)
BY KRICKEL K. CARRICK
The booklet from which this extract is taken was prepared by Carrick, a member
of the staff of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, and is an example of the way in
which large organizations are attempting to explain their technical functions to the
public in simple language.—Bibliography: E. W. Kemmerer, A B C of the Federal
Reserve System; H. P. Willis, The Federal Reserve System.
HE function of the Federal Reserve Board may be best
summed up by the statement that the Board is the super-
visory and governing body of the system. It is composed of eight
members; two members, the Secretary of the Treasury and the Comp-
troller of the Currency, are members ex-officio and the other six mem-
bers are appointed by the President for terms of ten years each.
The President, in selecting the six appointive members, is required
to have due regard to the financial, agricultural, industrial and com-
mercial interests and the geographical divisions of the country, and
no two appointive members may be from the same Federal reserve
estricte:
The country is divided geographically into twelve Federal reserve
districts and in each district there is a Federal reserve bank, named
for the city where located. . . .
Each Federal reserve bank is chartered for twenty years from the
date of its organization and is a corporation separate and distinct
from the other eleven reserve banks. .
The board of directors is composed of nine members equally divided
into three classes, which are designated by the letters A, B and C.
The member or stockholding banks are divided by the Federal Re-
serve Board into three groups, each group being composed as far as
possible of banks of similar size and each group choosing one class A
director and one class B director. In other words, the member banks
elect six of the nine directors. Class A directors must be representa-
tive of the stockholding banks and may be and usually are active
executive officers of member banks and obviously, since they repre-
sent banks, they represent the principal lending element in the com-
munity. Class B directors may not be officers, directors or employees
of any bank and must be “actively engaged in their district in com-
302 National Finance [1926
merce, agriculture or some other industrial pursuit,” so that they
may naturally be expected to represent the borrowing element in the
community. The three class C directors are appointed by the Federal
Reserve Board and since they may not be either officers, directors,
employees or stockholders of any bank, are representative of the
public and its general economic interest. One of the class C directors
has a dual capacity, being designated chairman of the board of di-
rectors and “Federa! reserve agent,” in which latter capacity he is
required to maintain an office of the Federal Reserve Board on the
premises of the bank. Another of the class C directors is designated
deputy chairman and exercises the powers of the chairman when
necessary. The terms of office of all directors are three years, so
arranged that the term of one director of each class expires each
years:
All national banks in existence when the Act was passed were
given a certain period within which to determine whether they would
become member banks by subscribing for stock in their district reserve
banks, or discontinue operation under national charters. . . .
Any State bank or trust company which is of specified size may
apply to the Federal Reserve Board for admission to the system and,
subject to such conditions as the Board may prescribe, may be ad-
mitted to membership. . . . These national and State bank members
are the only stockholders in the Federal reserve banks and their
capital stock subscriptions, just as in an ordinary bank, constitute
the first source of funds with which the reserve banks operate.
The second source of funds used by a Federal reserve bank is in
the reserve deposits of member banks. The country having found by
experience that scattered reserves could not be of maximum usefulness,
the Federal Reserve Act has brought about a pooling of such funds
by requiring every member bank, national or State, to carry all of its
legal reserve on deposit with its Federal reserve bank. It may carry
such money in its own vault as its officers think best, but the only
money which now counts as legal reserve is that which is left with the
reserve bank. However, since a pooled reserve need not be as large
as one individually held, the original reserve requirements of the Act
were reduced below the reserves required of a national bank before
the system was started and later the Act was amended so as to reduce
still further the reserve required, partly because it was concluded
No. 73] The Federal Reserve System 303
that a lower reserve would suffice and partly to compensate member
banks for inability to count cash in vault as reserve. To most member
banks these two reductions meant that a large amount of funds was
freed for them to loan or invest. The reserve which a member bank
must now keep with its reserve bank is a sum equal to three per cent
of the member bank’s time deposits plus seven, ten or thirteen per
cent of deposits payable on demand, depending on the location of
the member bank... .
Having assembled the reserves of the member banks of the country
into the twelve “reservoirs,’—the Federal reserve banks,—upon
the theory that when so assembled some of the reserve funds might
be drawn out to help member banks having a temporary or seasonal
demand in excess of their own ability to supply, Congress provided
a very simple arrangement for affording such help. Any member
bank, large or small, city or country, may ask its Federal reserve bank
to discount for it, that is, to buy from the member bank upon the
latter’s indorsement, certain “paper,” that is, notes and drafts, etc.,
which the member bank owns. The kinds of notes, etc., upon which
a member bank may thus replenish its funds, generally referred to as
“eligible paper,” are specified in the Federal Reserve Act and the
Federal Reserve Board is given the power to determine whether
particular classes of paper come within the specifications. Generally
speaking, paper to be eligible must be a note or draft, etc., issued or
drawn for the purpose of producing, purchasing, carrying or marketing
goods, agricultural products or live stock and it must have a definite
maturity at the time of rediscount of not more than go days, except
that if for an agricultural purpose or based upon live stock, its ma-
turity may be not more than nine months. .. .
Besides borrowing by means of the rediscount of eligible paper, a
bank may secure an advance from its Federal reserve bank by giving
its own note direct. In such a case the note must mature within
fifteen days and it must be secured either by Government securities
or by paper which is eligible for discount as previously described, or
by certain drafts and bankers’ acceptances of kinds which a Federal
reserve bank may purchase in the open market... .
Probably the most important services furnished by the Federal
reserve banks are their primary functions, namely the rediscount
of commercial paper or loans to member banks and the ability to
304 National Finance [1926
furnish currency, with which should be grouped, as of co-ordinate
importance, their open market operations. . . .
Scarcely less important than the primary services is the collection
of checks. Under regulations made by the Federal Reserve Board,
the twelve Federal reserve banks are acting virtually as nation-wide
clearing houses for their member banks and for such non-member
banks as maintain certain balances with the reserve banks, and by
far the greater portion of out-of-town checks are today collected
through the reserve banks almost as directly as checks on banks in
the same place are collected through the familiar general clearing
house exchange or direct exchange between banks. Out-of-town
checks deposited with a Federal reserve bank are sent direct to the
places where payable and as a rule direct to the banks on which
drawn, except that if drawn on banks in another Federal reserve
district they are sent to the reserve bank of that district, which pre-
sents them direct. This direct forwarding and settlement cut in half
the average time which was required to collect out-of-town checks
under the old indirect routing, in many instances effecting an even
greater saving of time. Obviously, if the proceeds of out-of-town
checks can be obtained more quickly, they can be sooner used, and
the importance of this saving of time to business and banking is
apparent, from the estimate generally accepted that over 95% of
the commercial transactions of the country are settled by checks.
Furthermore, the Federal reserve banks are able to collect checks
drawn on 90% or more of the banks of the country without payment
of the old “exchange” charge, another great saving to commerce.
Checks deposited by a member bank are credited to its reserve account
if the proceeds can be obtained immediately by the reserve bank;
otherwise, credit to the reserve account is deferred for the length of
time which it takes the reserve bank to obtain the proceeds, as shown
by a time schedule governing the matter and applying to checks
drawn on banks in different parts of the country.
The Federal reserve banks also collect miscellaneous items such as
notes, drafts, bonds, coupons, etc., collection being made through
direct routing and presentation in much the same manner as in the
case of checks. . .
Member banks wishing to create balances or pay funds in another
part of the country may do so by means of wire transfers through
No. 73] The Federal Reserve System 305
their reserve banks without loss of time and, if transfers are for multi-
ples of $100, at no cost to member banks except where made for the
benefit of a designated customer, when a charge is made for the cost
of the telegram. The convenience of this service as compared with an
express shipment may be illustrated by the case of a member bank
wishing to transfer $10,000 from Boston to San Francisco. By express
it would take five days to get the money there, the expressage would
be $32.50 and the loss of interest $8.22; while if made by wire through
the Federal reserve bank for the account of a member bank, there
would be no charge to the member bank and the time taken would
normally be a few minutes only. Such transfers are accomplished by
means of wire advices from the sending to the receiving Federal
reserve bank and through the medium of the “ Gold Settlement Fund,”
which is a fund of gold carried in Washington, D. C., by the twelve
Federal reserve banks. Each Federal reserve bank advises the Federal
Reserve Board daily by wire of its credits to each of the other eleven
reserve banks, whether those credits arise out of the wire transfers
mentioned here or out of other transactions, appropriate entries then
being made in the books of the Gold Settlement Fund. This daily
settlement between the reserve banks through this fund is one of the
chief reasons why the reserve banks are able to save so much time on
the collection of checks payable in other Federal reserve districts,—
payment for such checks when collected comes back through a wire
credit in the Gold Settlement Fund... .
Lest too much may be expected of the Federal Reserve System,
it is well to bear in mind that its purposes, functions, scope and influ-
ence, though broad, have limitations. That it can be a cure-all for
all financial ills or for general economic derangements is beyond the
range of possibility. It cannot be a preventive of business depressions,
which may always be expected when development and production
get too far ahead of economic needs. Nothing in the Federal Reserve
Act nor in the history of that measure imposes any duty or responsi-
bility upon it to attempt to influence prices, either in the interest of
the producer or for the advantage of the consumer. That it may
prevent financial panics, however, is a different matter, and competent
students for the most part believe that the danger of another finan-
cial panic in this country, such as that of 1907, is so small as to be neg-
ligible.
300 National Finance |1926
Nor does the reserve bank constitute a sort of guarantor of deposits
in member banks. The solvency of any bank, member or non-member,
is still the care and responsibility of the officers and directors of such
bank and in proportion as the official management is capable, careful
and conscientious in the same proportion will that bank be solvent
and reliable. At the same time, membership in the system, though
not a guaranty, is a bulwark of strength for any well managed bank,
because in the event of a seasonal demand for funds in excess of the
member bank’s own ability to meet, for the movement of crops or
goods, or in the event of panicky apprehension on the part of custom-
ers, the member bank has in its Federal reserve bank an institution of
unusual strength to which it may turn for extra funds, and if it is a
well managed bank it will have in its possession the kinds of assets
upon which it can obtain such funds.
Krickel K. Carrick, The Federal Reserve System (Boston, Federal Reserve Bank,
1926), 7-31 passim.
CHAPTER XV— AGRICULTURE, CONSERVA-
TION AND RECLAMATION
74. Reclamation and Conservation (1908)
BY HAROLD HOWLAND (10921)
Howland has been on the editorial staffs of the Outlook and Independent. Cons
servation first gained prominence when President Roosevelt in 1905 persuaded
Congress to create the Forestry Service. Later, plans were worked out for the con-
servation of irrigation waters as well.—Bibliography: C. R. Van Hise, Conservation
of Natural Resources in the United States.
HE first message of President Roosevelt to Congress contained
these words: “The forest and water problems are perhaps the
most vital internal questions of the United States.” At that moment,
on December 3, 1901, the impulse was given that was to add to the
American vocabulary two new words, “reclamation” and “ conserva-
tion,” that was to create two great constructive movements for the
preservation, the increase, and the utilization of natural resources,
and that was to establish a new relationship on the part of the Federal
Government to the nation’s natural wealth.
Reclamation and conservation had this in common: the purpose
of both was the intelligent and efficient utilization of the natural
resources of the country for the benefit of the people of the country.
But they differed in one respect, and with conspicuous practical
effects. Reclamation, which meant the spending of public moneys
to render fertile and usable arid lands hitherto deemed worthless,
trod on no one’s toes. It took from no one anything that he had; it
interfered with no one’s enjoyment of benefits which it was not in
the public interest that he should continue to enjoy unchecked. It
was therefore popular from the first, and the new policy went through
Congress as though on well-oiled wheels. Only six months passed
between its first statement in the Presidential message and its enact-
ment into law. Conservation, on the other hand, had begun by with-
holding the natural resources from exploitation and extravagant use.
307
308 Agriculture, Conservation and Reclamation [1908
It had, first of all, to establish in the national mind the principle that
the forests and mines of the nation are not an inexhaustible grab-bag
into which whosoever will may thrust greedy and wasteful hands,
and by this new understanding to stop the squandering of vast na-
tional resources until they could be economically developed and in-
telligently used. So it was inevitable that conservation should prove
unpopular, while reclamation gained an easy popularity, and that
those who had been feeding fat off the country’s stores of forest and
mineral wealth should oppose, with tooth and nail, the very suggestion
of conservation. ...
On the very day that the first Roosevelt message was read to the
Congress, a committee of Western Senators and Congressmen was
organized under the leadership of Senator Francis G. Newlands of
Nevada, to prepare a Reclamation Bill. The only obstacle to the
prompt enactment of the bill was the undue insistence upon State
Rights by certain Congressmen, “who consistently fought for local
and private interests as against the interests of the people as a whole.”
In spite of this shortsighted opposition, the bill became law on June
17, 1902, and the work of reclamation began without an instant’s
delay. The Reclamation Act set aside the proceeds of the sale of
public lands for the purpose of reclaiming the waste areas of the arid
West. Lands otherwise worthless were to be irrigated and in those
new regions of agricultural productivity homes were to be established.
The money so expended was to be repaid in due course by the settlers
on the land and the sums repaid were to be used as a revolving fund
for the continuous prosecution of the reclamation work. Nearly five
million dollars was made immediately available for the work. Within
four years, twenty-six “projects” had been approved by the Secretary
of the Interior and work was well under way on practically all of them.
They were situated in fourteen States—Arizona, Colorado, Idaho,
Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Washington, Utah, Wyoming, New
Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, California, South Dakota. The
individual projects were intended to irrigate areas of from eight
thousand to two hundred thousand acres each; and the grand total of
arid lands to which water was thus to be brought by canals, tunnels,
aqueducts, and ditches was more than a million and a half acres.
The work had to be carried out under the most difficult and adven-
turous conditions. The men of the Reclamation Service were in the
No. 74] Reclamation and Conservation 309
truest sense pioneers, building great engineering works far from the
railroads, where the very problem of living for the great number of
workers was no simple one. On the Shoshone in Wyoming these men
built the highest dam in the world, 310 feet from base to crest. They
pierced a mountain range in Colorado and carried the waters of the
Gunnison River nearly six miles to the Uncompahgre Valley through
a tunnel in the solid rock. The great Roosevelt dam on the Salt
River in Arizona with its gigantic curved wall of masonry 280 feet
high, created a lake with a capacity of fifty-six billion cubic feet, and
watered in 1915 an area of 750,000 acres.
The work of these bold pioneers was made possible by the fearless
backing which they received from the Administration at Washington.
The President demanded of them certain definite results and gave
them unquestioning support. In Roosevelt’s own words, “the men
in charge were given to understand that they must get into the water
if they would learn to swim; and, furthermore, they learned to know
that if they acted honestly, and boldly and fearlessly accepted respon-
sibility, I would stand by them to the limit. In this, as in every other
case, in the end the boldness of the action fully justified itself.”
The work of reclamation was first prosecuted under the United
States Geological Survey; but in the spring of 1908 the United States
Reclamation Service was established to carry it on, under the direction
of Mr. Newell, to whom the inception of the plan was due. Roosevelt
paid a fine and well-deserved tribute to the man who originated and
carried through this great national achievement when he said that
“Newell’s single-minded devotion to this great task, the constructive
imagination which enabled him to conceive it, and the executive
power and high character through which he and his assistant, Arthur
P. Davis, built up a model service—all these made him a model
servant, 0.0.
. . . By 1915 reclamation had added to the arable land of the
country a million and a quarter acres, of which nearly eight hundred
thousand acres were already “under water,” and largely under
tillage, producing yearly more than eighteen million dollars’ worth of
CTOS e eN
It had been the immemorial custom that the water powers on the
navigable streams, on the public domain, and in the National Forests
should be given away for nothing, and practically without question,
310 Agriculture, Conservation and Reclamation [r908
to the first comer. This ancient custom ran right athwart the newly
enunciated principle that public property should not pass into private
possession without being paid for, and that permanent grants, except
for home-making, should not be made. The Forest Service now began
to apply this principle to the water powers in the National Forests,
granting permission for the development and use of such power for
limited periods only and requiring payment for the privilege. This
was the beginning of a general water power policy which, in the course
of time, commended itself to public approval; but it was long before
it ceased to be opposed by the private interests that wanted these rich
resources for their own undisputed use.
Out of the forest movement grew the conservation movement in
its broader sense. In the fall of 1907 Roosevelt made a trip down the
Mississippi River with the definite purpose of drawing general atten
tion to the subject of the development of the national inland water-
ways. Seven months before, he had established the Inland Water-
ways Commission and had directed it to “consider the relations of
the streams to the use of all the great permanent natural resources
and their conservation for the making and maintenance of permanent
homes.” During the trip a letter was prepared by a group of men
interested in the conservation movement and was presented to him,
asking him to summon a conference on the conservation of natural
resources. Ata great meeting held at Memphis, Tennessee, Roosevelt
publicly announced his intention of calling such a conference.
In May of the following year the conference was held in the East
Room of the White House. . . . The object of the conference was
stated by the President in these words: “It seems to me time for the
country to take account of its natural resources, and to inquire how
long they are likely to last. We are prosperous now; we should not
forget that it will be just as important to our descendants to be pros-
perous in their time.”
At the conclusion of the conference a declaration prepared by the
Governors of Louisiana, New Jersey, Wisconsin, Utah, and South
Carolina, was unanimously adopted. This Magna Charta of the
conservation movement declared “that the great natural resources
supply the material basis upon which our civilization must continue
to depend and upon which the perpetuity of the nation itself rests,”
that “this material basis is threatened with exhaustion,” and that
No. 74] Reclamation and Conservation Si
“this conservation of our national resources is a subject of transcend-
ent importance, which should engage unremittingly the attention of
the Nation, the States, and the people in earnest coöperation.” .
The conference urged the continuation and extension of the forest
policies already established; the immediate adoption of a wise, active,
and thorough waterway policy for the prompt improvement of the
streams, and the conservation of water resources for irrigation, water
supply, power, and navigation; and the enactment of laws for the
prevention of waste in the mining and extraction of coal, oil, gas, and
other minerals with a view to their wise conservation for the use of the
people. The declaration closed with the timely adjuration, “Let us
conserve the foundations of our prosperity.”
As a result of the conference President Roosevelt created the Na-
tional Conservation Commission, consisting of forty-nine men of
prominence, about one-third of whom were engaged in politics, one-
third in various industries, and one-third in scientific work. Gifford
Pinchot was appointed chairman. The Commission proceeded to
make an inventory of the natural resources of the United States. This
inventory contains the only authentic statement as to the amounts
of the national resources of the country, the degree to which they
have already been exhausted, and their probable duration. But with
this inventory there came to an end the activity of the Conservation
Commission, for Congress not only refused any appropriation for its
use but decreed by law that no bureau of the Government should do
any work for any commission or similar body appointed by the Presi-
dent, without reference to the question whether such work was ap-
propriate or not for such a bureau to undertake.
Harold Howland, Theodore Roosevelt and His Times [Chronicles of America,
XLVII] (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1921), 130-149 passim.
312 Agriculture, Conservation and Reclamation [r910
75. Water on Arid Lands (1910)
BY CHIEF ENGINEER FREDERICK H. NEWELL
Newell served as chief engineer, director, and consulting engineer of the U. S.
Reclamation Service, until he became president of the Research Service. Here he
discusses in general terms some of the principles of irrigation farming.—Bibliog-
raphy: J. L. Matthews, Conservation of Water; G. F. Swain, Conservation of Water
by Storage; R. P. Teel, Irrigation in the United States.
ECLAMATION works have been laid out in all of the Western
States and Territories and an investment of over $60,000,000
has been made. Part of the works in each State has been completed
and is being operated, returning a part of the cost. About 10,000
families are being supplied with water. Most of these have come from
the humid regions and have located upon tracts of land which for-
merly were considered valueless, and in portions of the country which
were called desert. In short, by the use of a trust fund which is being
returned and used over again, the waste waters of the Nation are
being conserved, destructive floods prevented, apparently valueless
land converted into highly productive farms, and thousands of fami-
lies settled upon small tracts sufficient for their support. To this
extent relief is being given to the tendency toward congestion in the
industrial centers and home markets are being extended. The farmer
located upon a small irrigated tract owned and cultivated by himself
necessarily practices intensive farming, produces the highest crop
value per acre, is a large consumer as well as producer, and becomes
the most valuable citizen in the stability of the commonwealth. .. .
The object of the reclamation act, as stated in the law is the con-
struction of irrigation works for the reclamation of arid or semi-arid
lands in the States and Territories named in the act. But the pur-
pose behind the mere reclamation of the land is the providing of
opportunities for homes for an independent self-supporting citizenship.
The law is not drawn for the purpose of making men rich, but for
providing opportunities for citizens who have the skill, energy, and
thrift sufficient to make use of the opportunities for securing a home
for themselves and for their children; one in which the family may be
supported; and one where with the growth of the country and increased
No. 75] Water on Arid Lands 313
land values, it will be possible for an increasing number of families
to maintain themselves upon subdivisions of the original farms.
Thus far the wisdom of the framers of the act has been demonstrated,
and it has been shown that, with wise administration, the law is
proving of inestimable value to the States and to the Nation. From
time to time, it is necessary to make improvements or changes in the
organic law, such as are inseparable with growth, but as a whole this
act has proved remarkably complete. . . .
As might be imagined, the population in the first few years is largely
transitional. The same qualities which bring a man to a project tend
to make him leave it. He has heard of all the good things, has read
the roseate descriptions of irrigation, its benefits, but the drawbacks
have never been brought to his attention. It is hardly to be wondered
that many of the people who take up irrigation for the first time sud-
denly awake to the fact that it is not wholly a matter of sunshine and
flowers, and that for success energy, skill, and thrift are required. In
order to get well started on an irrigated farm a man must have not
only good fortune but must be prepared to endure privations which
he would not be willing to consider at home; doing this, however, with
the assurance that the reward ultimately will be correspondingly
great
The size of the farms obtainable from the public domain is defined
by the reclamation act not by an arbitrary number of acres, as in the
case of the homestead and other similar laws, but the Secretary of the
Interior is required to give a “limit of area per entry, which limit
shall represent the acreage which in the opinion of the Secretary may
be reasonably required for the support of a family upon the lands in
questiona a ah
In the extreme southern part of the arid region, where the daily
sunlight and warmth is most favorable for the production of crops,
it results that where the land is carefully tilled, where it has been put
into high grade crops, and especially in fruit, ro acres may be ample
for the support of a family. This is because of the fact that with
intensive cultivation, crop follows crop in rapid succession, there
being hardly any interval for rest during the year. Alfalfa, for ex-
ample, may be cut eight or ten times, while there may be three suc-
cessive crops during the year of grains or vegetables.
Farther north, where the summer season is limited, and there is a
314 Agriculture, Conservation and Reclamation [r910
long cold winter, the area required for a family is correspondingly
greater. With alfalfa and sugar beets, 40 acres may be considered a
fairly good sized farm, as, for example, in the more favorable parts
of Montana, and elsewhere, 80 acres is usually the limit. Few men
can handle successfully over 80 acres of irrigated land, especially
with high-priced water. ...
The requirement of actual settlement on the reclaimed land has
been one which has led to much discussion and has been the cause of
much of the hardship incident to pioneering. The theory of the law
as originally passed was that the Government, investing this trust
fund without profit and interest, does this for the purpose of securing
settlement in the more sparsely populated western States. The prime
object was not so much to enrich these localities or States as to secure
resident citizens, who would not only cultivate the soil and become
producers but would build up the institutions of the State, make roads,
organize schools, and add to the strength of the Commonwealth. .. .
. . . From the standpoint of a man working in a store or machine
shop, a teacher or professional man, the idea is extremely attractive
of getting one of these homesteads from the Government, visiting it
occasionally, adding improvements, and hiring a man to look after it
until the community has been built up and the days of pioneering
have passed. His monthly savings can be put into the little farm and
provision made for the future without interfering with his daily wage-
earning capacity. It seems to him a useless hardship to be compelled
either to give up the farm or to go and live upon it, and he urges that
if he be allowed to hold the farm and invest his savings in it he can in
the end bring about a higher development than would be possible if
he spent all his time on the farm itself.
There is, however, no way of distinguishing between the smali
investor and the large, and if the school-teacher has the right to enjoy
absentee landlordism, so has the man of larger means. Thus it would
soon happen that the bounty of the Government would be enjoyed
by people of comparative wealth and leisure, renting their farms to the
class of men who are most needed as resident owners.
The crops planted by the settlers are as varied as are the farmers
themselves and the climatic surroundings. They naturally endeavor
to raise the things with which they are familiar and are somewhat
slow in adapting their methods to the requirements of the soil and
No. 75] Water on Arid Lands 315
climate. As a rule, grain is planted first, as it is a quick crop and it
is possible to realize an early return from the new ground. The ex-
perienced irrigator endeavors to get a small part of the land into
alfalfa as quickly as possible, knowing that it enriches the soil. With
his first grain crop he sows on part of his land some alfalfa seed and
if the stand is good he leaves this small tract in alfalfa for a few years,
cultivating the remaining areas and adding each year to the alfalfa
tract until the time arrives when he can plow in the alfalfa which was
first planted, turning the plants under to enrich the soil, then culti-
vating it and planting to root crops.
One of the problems with the lighter and sometimes better soils
is to hold these in place until the crops are established. The desert
vegetation, the sagebrush and greasewood, while undisturbed protect
the soil from the winds, but, as has been shown by bitter experience
again and again, when these plants are removed and the ground is
plowed the winds of early spring sweeping furiously across the dry
level field blow the soil away in clouds, carrying off the seed.
It requires a few incidents of this kind to convince the newcomer
that it is wise to follow the advice given him not to clear his entire
farm at once, but to leave rows of sagebrush across the path of the
prevailing spring winds. He soon appreciates that it is little short
of wicked to burn the sagebrush, and instead of piling it for destruction
he learns to leave it in long windrows, cultivating the places between
until the ground is well shaded by the growing crop and the roots
have been firmly established, then he can remove the remaining sage-
brush or windbreaks and get his entire field into crop. In a few years,
by careful handling, the light soil becomes reasonably compacted, or
held back by the roots and straw of the vegetation, or protected by the
growing trees and shrubbery, so that no further damage is incurred.
These problems of dealing with the settlers, of giving them sound
advice, and at the same time collecting from them the cost of the works,
involve the problems which are far more difficult than those of engi-
neering construction or related business management. The difh-
culties of management are complicated by the fact that the irriga-
tor frequently regards his individual interest as antagonistic to that
of the community or management, insisting upon wasting water be-
cause of the mistaken belief that the more of a good thing he has the
betters: a.
316 Agriculture, Conservation and Reclamation [r910
The value of the crop produced and the consequent ability of the
farmers to return the cost of the investment are dependent directly
upon water being received on each farm in proper quantity and at
the right time. If too much water is applied the crops will be corre-
spondingly injured, the available soluble salts in the soil will be washed
out or brought to the surface, the land will depreciate in value, and
large areas will be destroyed. With intensive cultivation and the crop
production in the more valuable fruits, berries, or vegetables under
ideal conditions, the yield may be several hundred dollars an acre.
By a slight error in handling the water the crop value may be lessened
by a hundred dollars an acre or more.
Although the net product per acre may appear to be large and satis-
factory, and it is impossible to prove that higher values might have
been reached, yet the man who thoroughly understands the situation
appreciates that there has been a loss of $100 per acre, which is directly
attributable to lack of good management, and that under better con-
ditions higher values would have been attained by the farmers. This
possible reduction of crop values in a highly developed agricultural
area of say 10,000 acres at $100 per acre means a loss to the community
of a million dollars, or, rather, under better or more successful manage-
ment of the water, the net return of the community might have been
$1,000,000 more during the season.
This is by no means a fanciful idea. The study of ditch manage-
ment and crop production in irrigated regions shows that in many
instances there has been a shortage of water at a critical time, due to
lack of forethought or skill on the part of some one.
The average farmer does not appreciate what this has meant to
him, as he is apt to rarely figure out these larger matters with any
degree of precision, and has been accustomed to disappointments in
his crops so often that he regards such matters as inseparable from
agriculture. If the crop looks fairly well he frequently goes no deeper.
Possibly never having seen a full-crop production under excellent
conditions he has no standard by which to judge.
This matter was well illustrated by an experienced irrigation man-
ager who examined one of the large projects in Wyoming where the
farmers for several years had been what they considered fairly success-
ful. They had raised profitable crops and had succeeded in getting
along with constant temporary repairs to the main canal. He took the
No. 76] - Scientific Farming 317
history of a single season’s operation and the number of days that the
canal was out of service through accidental but preventable breaks,
and figured on a conservative basis what would have been the crop
products had the works been maintained in excellent order by skilled
men. He showed that had fire swept through the country and de-
stroyed every visible improvement in the towns of the vicinity the
loss to the entire community would have been less than had actually
resulted from preventable failure to operate the canals properly. The
spectacular view of a burning barn or storehouse, rivets public atten-
tion upon this definite loss, but the gradual and unimpressive delay
in development of the crop day by day is not noticeable. While all
of the neighborhood would rush to aid the owner of the burning barn,
yet no one knows or apparently cares while the valuable fruits or
other crops are being imperceptibly reduced in value to a far larger
degree.
Frederick H. Newell, in Annual Report of Smithsonian Institution, r910 (Wash-
ington, Government Printing Office, 1911), 169-178 passim.
me pei hs td
76. Scientific Farming (1912)
BY DEAN EUGENE DAVENPORT
Davenport is Professor Emeritus of Thermatology at the University of Illinois,
having spent a lifetime in the teaching of agricultural science in various capacities;
he has been President of the Colegio Agronomica at Sao Paulo, Brazil, and was
Dean of the College of Agriculture at the University of Illinois from 1895 to 1922.—
On farmers’ problems, see also No. 72 above and Nos. 77, 80, 81, 82 below.—Bibli-
ography: Agriculture Year Books of the Department of Agriculture.
HE world could not long have lived under the oldtime destruc-
tive methods of agriculture, no matter how profitable they
might have been temporarily to those engaged therein. The waste
of fertility was too great. Lands that had been thousands of years
in the making were ruined within a generation. Had those methods
been continued, however temporarily profitable they may have been,
the decline of the country would have been inevitable from sheer
inability to wring sufficient sustenance from the soil.
Chemistry was the first of the sciences to turn its attention to
318 Agriculture, Conservation and Reclamation [rọr2
agriculture, and the first two subjects studied were the scientific
feeding of animals and the food requirements of crops. By the new
methods of investigation devised by the scientist, it was speedily
discovered that the old feeding practices, while securing results,
were yet enormously wasteful in that the rations were sadly unbal-
anced so far as the requirements of the animals were concerned,
resulting in corresponding losses in food value. The result was the
devising of a “balanced ration,” which very nearly corresponds in its
component parts to the real needs of an animal for nourishment and
thus avoids the wastage of the surplus, particularly of the more
expensive nitrogenous foods.
Turning his attention to the soil, the chemist found correspondingly
wasteful practices. To be sure the farmer had learned through expe-
rience generations ago that manures and other fertilizers would increase
the growth of crops, though he was about as particular to apply soot
and other carbonaceous material as he was to apply the really effective
fertilizers. The chemist quickly discovered that of all the elements
necessary to the growth of plants only three need ordinarily to con-
cern the farmer. Of these, nitrogen is enormously expensive, costing
in the markets of the world some fifteen cents a pound, and as at least
four pounds are required for a bushel of wheat it was evident that the
wheat supply of the world must have been produced at wholesale
expense of natural nitrogen. The scientist did not rest until he dis-
covered, through the agency of bacteriology, that the valuable nitro-
gen could be captured from the atmosphere, whence it originally came.
This fact was probably the most notable contribution which science
has ever made to the progress of agriculture and, so far as we can see,
the most notable it will ever be able to make. The dependence of
man upon atmospheric nitrogen brought into form for plant use is
beyond the power of comprehension. . . .
An early field for scientific investigation was that of diseases, first
of animals and afterwards of plants. Indeed it was while working
in this territory that some of the most important discoveries have
been made, particularly concerning parasitic infection. The result
of all this investigation has been the saving of enormous numbers of
animals and of large acreage of plants by precautionary methods,
such as quarantine, disinfection, etc., though the direct treatment of
individual animals is generally inadvisable for economic reasons.
No. 76] Scientific Farming 319
It is almost needless to remark that with these developments in the
domain of agriculture much that was formerly tradition and super-
stition has begun to pass away. How recent it has all been, how-
ever, is shown by the fact that men still live who plant their seeds and
kill their meat with reference to the phases of the moon, who treat
“hollow-horn” and “wolf in the tail” by incantation, who put a
red-hot horseshve into the churn to drive the witches away, and who
castrate only when the sign is right. While instances of this kind
can still be found, it is yet true that the great masses of farmers to-
day, even in the remoter agricultural districts, have caught the scien-
tific spirit; and most of the material that now goes to constitute the
revised agriculture of the twentieth century rests upon well established
facts. So true is this that no man in these days can get a hearing any-
where upon any matter which does not rest, or at least seem to rest,
upon experimental knowledge.
We have not yet reached the end of this development. We may be
said to be just now in the very beginning of sanitary science regarding
the operations of the farm. A man must do more now than to produce
his milk or butter; he must produce it in a way which will assure
the consumer that he is not taking communicable diseases in the
milk, which is a kind of universal culture medium for everything
which comes its way. It is this fact which has so notably raised the
cost of city milk and is so appreciably reducing the mortality of
infants.
Economics is perhaps the last of the sciences to reform the practices
of agriculture. In the Far West it has taken the form of mountain
and desert over which fruit must be transported to reach the Eastern
markets. In this way the last vestige of extreme individualism on the
farm is being obliterated. What the passing of this individualism may
mean so far as independence and the development of personal initiative
are concerned, only time will tell; but one thing is clear—that as the
facts in agriculture are developed by scientific research, the truth
stands out that the business of food production, to some extent at
least, must be organized and conducted around larger units than that
of a single farmer and his family.
The “organization of the farm” is a scientific conception of the
most recent development. So long as wild lands could be had for
mere occupancy, a farmer could get nothing out of his business but
320 Agriculture, Conservation and Reclamation [1912
the bare return for labor; his land could have no value and there
could be no investment except a slight one in implements and animals.
Now, however, when the public domain is practically exhausted,
competition for land will raise its price, food values must go up, for
the farmer must realize income on capital as well as on labor, and his
business is gradually assuming the form of other capitalized industries.
This puts a new economic phase on agriculture and the whole question
of how to organize and conduct a farm is a new one in economic science,
as it is in agricultural practice. We still await its solution. Indeed,
its serious study has only just begun.
The universal extension of agricultural education may be said to
be the direct result of the development of scientific agriculture. There
is little in mere handicraft that can be taught; it must mostly be ac-
quired by experience. It is only when a subject has reached the
scientific stage that it becomes teachable through the elucidation of
the principles involved. Because of the ease and speed with which
certain of these principles can be learned, and because of their immedi-
ate and far-reaching effect, particularly upon the permanence of
agriculture, the demand is universal that the subject should be taught
in as many of the schools as possible. The economist readily sees
that the oldtime wasteful methods cannot prevail; that if we are to
have a permanent civilization we must have a permanent food supply;
and this must depend not upon practices that gradually impoverish
the land, but rather on those scientific procedures which leave it each
generation a little better than before in order that it may meet the
demands of an increasing population with a more highly developed
civilization.
This then is the aim and purpose of scientific agriculture: to replace
tradition with well established facts; to substitute for the irregular
and uncertain purposes of the individual a systematic and well organ-
ized business of food production by the community at large; to further
adapt our domesticated animals and plants to the purposes of man;
and to stop forever that reckless depletion of the power of the soil
to produce, which will not only fix a low limit to the population of our
country, but so weaken the constitution of the people as to lay the
foundation for disease. It aims, too, to establish in these early and
prosperous days, through education, such standards of living as shall
prevent the coming of those hard conditions which have descended
No. 77] The Farmer’s Chance 321
upon such races as have surrendered themselves to the mere business
of getting a living on worn-out soil.
Eugene Davenport, in Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social
Science (Philadelphia, March, 1912), XL, 46-50 passim.
77. The Farmer’s Chance (19109)
BY PRESIDENT KENYON L. BUTTERFIELD
Butterfield has written various works of agricultural value, and has taken an
active part in the Grange movement. He was President of the Massachusetts
Agricultural College from 1906 to 1924, and was later at the head of Michigan State
College.—Bibliography: S. J. Buck, The Agrarian Crusade [Chronicles of America,
XXXXV]; Agriculture Year Books.
FTER all the farmers must direct their own destinies. The best
service that government can render farmers is to help them
to help themselves. The paternalism of the state and the gratuitous
benevolence of the city are equally futile in the building of a rural
democracy. The codperative efforts of farmers are indispensable to
real rural progress. Whether in securing better farm practice, or in
obtaining more satisfactory profits, or in evolving a better country
life, the collective intelligence and planning of the great masses of
farmers should be added to all investigation and teaching by specialists,
all projects of government, all the work of school and college, all
laws for regulation or control... .
. .. Only through association can farmers defend themselves;
only so can they make their fullest contributions to the general wel-
fare. There is danger in organization. The individual may lose
himself in some big overhead attachment. Powerful combinations
of farmers may exercise their power wrongfully. But the gains are
far greater than the losses. The farmer has been called the most
independent of men; but alone he is no longer independent. He
becomes truly free, under modern conditions, only as he joins with
his fellows for common ends. The dangers arising in associated
activity from impulse or ignorance, selfish class interests or feeling
can be met by education, time and experience.
Though it is doubtful if a farmers’ political party can have any
322 Agriculture, Conservation and Reclamation [r919
permanent place in America, the farmers must be free to act together
to influence parties, measures and men. There should be room in the
rural program for a fighting force of farmers. The need for such
aggressive tactics may arise only occasionally; but sound policy calls
for its recognition. But rural associations do not exist for their own
sakes. They must seek to serve. They must not be narrow in their
views or in their activities. They are for the good of all, or they are
no good at all. They must be ready to codperate heartily with one
another and with public agencies. They should become as efficient
as possible, each doing its own part in the program of rural better-
mentere
Each agency or institution devised to assist farmers and farming
should work out a clearly marked policy and program. Its particular
task in rural improvement needs to be defined and recognized. A
particular form of organization, as yet not fully utilized in America,
is the thorough coöperation of the growers of a particular product, as
of cotton growers, wheat growers, stock-breeders, in all parts of their
business—producing, selling, and establishing relationships to other
interests or to government. Industrial solidarity seems necessary
for greatest coöperative effectiveness. The citrus-fruit growers of
California have shown the way to one of the most important and
promising methods of agricultural advancement. . . .
In some respects the most important single improvement in rural
affairs is to develop real communities of farming folk. These commu-
nities must often be created—they do not exist. The community
idea is simply that of a group of farmers and the people closely allied
with them, acting together as one man. The members of this local
group can plan as a unit in production of crops, agreeing on kinds
and amounts. They can sell together and buy together. They can
act together in school and church affairs and in matters of public
health. A community may have its own ideas and ideals, its own
church, school, farmers’ exchange, library, in fine all organized ac-
tivities that seem necessary or desirable. The local community is
almost essential in a real rural democracy, and indeed is the unit of
democracy.
In any program of rural reconstruction that aims to be compre-
hensive it would be a fatal blunder not to stress the importance of the
social or humane factor. The life is more than meat. The man is
No. 78] Agricultural Extension Work DDR
worth more than dollars. “The farmer is of more consequence than
the farm and should be first improved.” The big farm question is
getting and keeping the right sort of people on the land. A satisfying
farm life is necessary to a permanent agriculture and consequently
to the best farming. The city will always be replenished from the
country-side. We must therefore omit no plan and decline no exertion
that will encourage a good farm life. . . .
Kenyon L. Butterfield, Tke Farmer and the New Day (New York, Macmillan,
1919), 254-258 passim.
78. Agricultural Extension Work (1924)
BY H. W. HOCHBAUM
Hochbaum is associated with the extension work of the Department of Agri-
culture. For information on local developments, county farm agents may be con-
sulted in many communities.—Bibliography: publications of various State agri-
cultural colleges; O. M. Kile, The Farm Bureau Movement.
HE county agricultural agent is the local extension repre-
sentative of the State college of agriculture, the United States
Department of Agriculture, and the local people wherever extension
work is carried on codperatively. He is the joint representative of
these agencies in developing and carrying on in a mutual way plans
for meeting the larger problems of farming and farm life. Admin-
istratively, he is responsible to the extension division of the State
agricultural college, which guides and directs his work. His work
is financed largely from public funds. His relationship to the people
or organized groups of people of his county is that of a public official,
and his work is with all the people. He works with all organizations
and not for any one organization or group. He isa leader who points
the way to better and more profitable farming and a more satisfying
country life, and teaches how these objectives may be attained. .. .
The county extension office is a logical center and clearing house
for the many movements that may be developed to aid in redirecting
and improving agriculture and rural problems. The extension agent
lends a sympathetic ear to the needs of the many rural organizations
324 Agriculture, Conservation and Reclamation [r924
and gives time to causes which these may advance in the interest of
public welfare... .
The reports of county agricultural agents show that the average
agent will rarely serve effectively or long if he assumes the position
of an adviser or expert on all agricultural matters. In common par-
lance, the successful county agricultural agent is more than a “trouble
shooter ” or “handy man” for individuals calling on him for help.
His reports testify that he builds more soundly and permanently
by working to secure definite progress and tangible accomplishment
in a few well-selected and fundamental problems which are the con-
cern of many individuals. He makes intensive studies of the farming
and country-life conditions of his county so that he may be able to
diagnose existing problems and ills. He selects problems to work on
which fall within the scope of extension work, shows the people that
such problems are important locally, and suggests that their solution
be worked out jointly with the extension service. Steadfastly and
consistently the agent works to arouse the attention and interest of
the rural people in these problems, and to kindle enthusiasm and
attract active support for their solution. Withal, he bends every
effort to select and to organize rural leadership and to train the people
of his county to work together in solving these problems, encouraging
as far as possible a widespread adoption of the practices that may be
recommended... .
The people are taught through community program making to
recognize a community or commodity problem as their problem. The
problem of the individual is submerged in the larger interest of the
group. The group problem becomes the individual’s problem. More-
over, the local people learn that by self-help and group action, the
larger problems can be solved with the joint help of the community
and the extension service. Thereby, community action and commu-
nity betterment are encouraged, more people are reached, and larger
interests are benefited... .
.. . In many cases extension agents learn that they must find
or devise means by which people may adopt recommended prac-
tices.
The reports of county agricultural agents give many illustrations
of these points. They show, for example, that the use of lime in a com-
munity may be held in check because of the lack of conveniences
No. 78] Agricultural Extension Work 325
for handling the lime. Where dependence is placed upon the individual
to use lime under such conditions, comparatively small amounts are
used, but when through the efforts of the extension agents lime bins
are established in certain communities, many more people use lime
because it has been made easy for them to get lime. Often the high
cost of lime may be the limiting factor. Thus when an agent devised
a means of providing cheap lime the people used large quantities of
TEM oy
Similarly, lack of local equipment may prevent many farmers from
adopting practices which have been proved worth while and which
they are ready to accept. It may be necessary for the county agri-
cultural agent or specialist to help organize a supplementary service.
The man with the home orchard is not able to produce clean fruit
unless he sprays. That may be demonstrated to him. He can not,
however, afford, in some cases, the type of machinery that is nec-
essary to insure effective spraying. Therefore the county agricultural
agent and specialist may develop such service associations as spray
rings. In this way a few farmers can band together, own a machine
codperatively, and do effective spraying. In other localities, because
of different conditions, county agricultural agents and specialists
may have to devise modifications of this, as, for example, by es-
tablishing a commercial spray service to insure the production of clean
fruit. .
Extension agents are recognizing that the teaching of improved
practices may be expedited for the great mass when the improvements
suggested are reduced to demonstrations of single practices of a
simple nature. This principle is based on the knowledge that the
great mass of people are reached through the eye and imitate what
has been seen. Therefore, if such teaching can be reduced to terms
of single practices these may be more likely to be adopted by the
average farmer. In other words, in the past extension agents have
been dealing, perhaps too much, with principles and have not realized
the difficulty the average person has in applying principle to prac-
ticesdeat
A simple demonstration in liming may be used as an example. The
demonstration is designed so that a strip of land is left unlimed through
a field, the remainder of which has been limed according to the con-
ditions to be met in that field. The most favorable time for comparing
326 Agriculture, Conservation and Reclamation [1924
results is at the harvest. A number of people are invited to the field,
and in their presence the crop removed from a certain area of the limed
soil is weighed and compared with the crop cut from the same sized
area in the unlimed part of the field. The lesson is obvious. Through
liming, definite increased crop production is obtained. . . .
The employment of volunteer local leaders to assist in carrying on
extension work is a feature which has been given increased attention
during the year... .
The reports of extension agents indicate unusual interest in methods
of obtaining a spread of influence from demonstration work or other
extension activities. No doubt, all realize the necessity for securing
the greatest amount of interest in the demonstration work. Of late
the agents are more actively concerned in working to turn this interest
into action on the part of a large number of people and getting them
to adopt the practices which are demonstrated. .. .
The systematic methods used by some agents to secure a wider
spread of adoption should be of great interest to others. Thus, ex-
tension agents in Maine are trying the plan of making a campaign for
the enrollment of codperators following a demonstration period. Co-
operators in this sense mean the people who pledge themselves to
adopt the practices, the results of which have been proved by demon-
strations. The success of the method is worthy of further study by
extension agents everywhere. The principle involved is that of
following the demonstration period by, or merging with it, a def-
inite and systematic attempt to bring to a large number of people
results of the demonstrations, and then by several methods to secure
pledges from such people that they will adopt the practice recom-
mended tint.
There is a very definite need for training courses or other work that
will better prepare men for county agent work. The assistant State
director of extension in Indiana emphasized this fact in his annual
report:
Approximately one-fourth of the men now on the job have been appointed during
the past year. This great demand for county agricultural agents emphasizes the
need through the agricultural colleges to give special attention to the training of
men for the extension service. This work is so well established that, though farmers
are complaining about high taxes and insisting upon reduction in expenses, the
demand is not to cut out the county agricultural agents as an economical movement,
but to have a more efficient service through the office, if this be possible.
No. 79] Relation of Geography to Timber Supply 327
One of the new developments during the past year in California
has been an undergraduate course in agricultural extension methods.
This course was given during the second semester of the year 1921-22
to a class of more than 30 students. The course considers the history,
methods, and administration of extension work. Four of the students
are now employed as assistant county agricultural agents in Cali-
fornia. It has been found that the men who took this course are more
finished in extension work than other men of similar age and training
who graduated from the same college, but did not take a course in
extension methods.
H. W. Hochbaum, Methods and Results of Coöperative Extension Work, United
States Department of Agriculture Department Circular 316 (Washington, Gov-
ernment Printing Office, 1924), 1-34 passim.
ee
79. Relation of Geography to Timber Supply (1925)
BY CHIEF FORESTER WILLIAM B. GREELEY
Greeley entered the United States Forest Service in 1904, and has been Chief
Forester since 1920. The two great purposes of the service are to prevent waste of
our existing timber supply and to further the growth of timber as a crop for the use
of future generations.—On timber reserves, see “Timber, Mine or Crop,” in Agri-
culture Year Book, 1922. On methods of timber protection, see various publications
of the Forest Service.
Basis HE stern facts of geography have largely controlled these
past developments in our forest industries and in the cost
of their wares to the American consumer. The true measure of timber
supply is not quantity but availability. Sixty per cent of all the wood
that is left in the United States and 75 per cent of its virgin timber
lie west of the Great Plains, whereas two-thirds of the population
and an even larger proportion of our agriculture and manufactures
are east of the Great Plains. The forests bordering the Pacific Coast
contain over a trillion board feet of virgin stumpage. At the most,
they will not supply our present consumption very long: but already
the unbalanced geographical distribution of this resource is creating
well-nigh famine prices in the parts of the United States where forest
328 Agriculture, Conservation and Reclamation [1925
products are used in the largest quantities. Dependence upon the
softwood forests of Siberia as the principal source of supply would
differ from our present situation only in degree.
And as geography controls the cost of the products of virgin forests
when they reach the ultimate consumer in Massachusetts, Illinois,
or Florida, so will geography control the substitution of other sources
of timber supply. Most of the other countries have progressed from
one stage to another in their source of wood more or less as single
geographical units. In the United States the distances are so great
and the local conditions so diverse that this transition is bound, for
some time to come, to be regional rather than national. We have
already seen that, owing to the concentration of the paper industry
in the northeastern states, more than half of our consumption of wood
fiber products is now drawn from foreign sources. And by the same
token, the exigencies of the portions of the country farthest removed
from the dwindling frontier of virgin forests are driving them to a new
source of wood, namely the timber crop.
Forestry is the economic competitor of transportation. As long as
cheap virgin stumpage available at no great distance dominated our
lumber and paper markets, there was no place in the economic scheme
of things for systematic timber growing. But once the cost of trans-
porting forest products from the nearest virgin sources exceeds the
cost of growing them at home, timber culture not only becomes
economically feasible but sooner or later is impelled by purely com-
mercial forces. This is just what is taking place today, to a limited
degree, in New England, New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey;
and, to a still more limited degree, in the South. Second growth white
pine in New England, 30 or 4o years old, is worth from $10 to $18 per
thousand board feet standing in the woods. Second growth southern
pine of the same age brings from $8 to $12 on the stump. With such
ceturns before them and with timber values constantly moving up-
ward, hard-headed business men realize that forestry pays. One
might almost plat the process by a series of geographical zones; and
show that when the freight rate into any consuming region from the
nearest large supply of virgin timber passes the $10 or $12 mark, an
economic basis for timber cropping is afforded and forestry slowly
finds a place in the use of land.
Forest conservation in the United States hitherto has been largely
No. 79] Relation of Geography to Timber Supply 329
a matter of public ownership of timber land and public policies based
not upon costs and profits but upon foresight of coming national
necessities. Todav it is percolating down into the counting house and
the directors’ board room. The illusion of inexhaustible virgin forests
has spent itself. Wood-using industries recognize the alternatives
which they face—producing their future raw material or passing out
of existence. A committee of pulp and paper manufacturers is study-
ing ways and means of perpetuating their industry on American soil.
A committee of turpentine and rosin producers has visited France to
learn the naval stores forestry of the Landes and how it may be ap-
plied to our southern pineries. These are signs of the times.
Like the other nations in similar plight, we must barter for all the
timber we can secure from our neighbors. The prospects in this
direction, however, are not encouraging. Our present exports and
imports of lumber and other forest products nearly balance. The
imports can undoubtedly be increased somewhat, particularly of
paper from Canada and of lumber in limited quantities from certain
Canadian provinces and from Mexico. The hardwood forests of South
America and the softwood forests of Siberia hold out possible sources
of relief. But a number of other industrially aggressive nations are
in the same situation as the United States. A recent survey of the
principal forest resources and wood-using countries of the world
shows that the markets of the whole earth are short of raw materials
for paper and construction lumber, and that the accessible supply of
timber, particularly of coniferous timber, is not adequate to meet the
requirements of modern civilization. The cost of transporting Asiatic
or South American lumber to the United States, added to prices at
the source fixed by keen international competition, would be well-
nigh prohibitive for ordinary construction or industrial purposes.
Nevertheless we must get all the foreign wood that we can to tide
over the lean years, and we must go after it intelligently and system-
atically. For one thing, a thorough study should be made of the
resources available in the hardwood forests of Central and South
America and their utility for the replacement of our rapidly waning
supply of native hardwoods.
Undoubtedly we must and will learn to use less wood. The high
cost of lumber has already decreased its per capita consumption in
the United States about 4o per cent below the peak of 1906. Steel,
330 Agriculture, Conservation and Reclamation [r925
cement and clay products have been substituted for much of the con-
struction lumber formerly used; and coal, oil, and electricity have
taken the place of much fuel wood. These substitutions are increasing,
as wood becomes more dear; and it is well that they should. On the
other hand, the use of wood is constantly widening as the chemist
and engineer discover new methods of converting or fashioning it
for modern requirements. Wood is now manufactured into grain
alcohol and artificial silk, even into baking powder and electrical
conduits. The field for wood fiber products is constantly enlarging.
Notwithstanding the substitution of other materials and the curtailed
use of wood for many of its old functions, the total drain upon our
forests thus far has not materially lessened. The danger lies not in
reducing the use of wood where satisfactory substitution is possible,
but in growing shortage for many essential needs for which there are
no substitutes. In most of the industrial countries of Europe the
per capita consumption of wood is not diminishing, but increasing;
and the United States cannot expect permanently to follow a different
course if it is to hold its living standards and retain its industrial
leadership.
One of the most essential constructive remedies is to reduce the
drain upon our forests by reducing the waste in the manufacture and
use of their products. The very abundance and cheapness of virgin
timber in the United States has bred wasteful methods of logging,
manufacture, and refabrication which are yielding but slowly to the
pressure of scant supply and high costs. The general application of
even our present knowledge of waste elimination in logging, milling
and refabricating lumber, in timber preservation, in the conversion
of wood into fiber products and the like, would reduce the current
drain upon our forests by 20 or 25 per cent. And we still have much
to learn before all the possibilities of economy in the use of our forests
are fathomed. The elimination of preventable losses from forest
fires and from destructive insects and tree diseases would save an
enormous total of useful timber. A cord of wood saved is equal to a
cord of wood grown. And one of the most obvious things that should
be done with all possible dispatch is to conserve our existing timber
supply to the last foot by research in the conversion and use of forest
products on an adequate scale, accompanied by wide dissemination
of its results through the forest industries and forest consumers.
No. 79] Relation of Geography to Timber Supply B31
After everything else has been said, no solution of our forest problem
is possible without the generous growing of trees. We must come, in
the last analysis, as every other country treading the same path has
come, to forestry as the necessary and economic employment of much
of our land. This solution is as complete as it is inevitable. Intensive
timber culture on the 470 million acres of forest land in the United
States, timber culture on a par with that of Germany, France and
Scandinavia, can produce a yearly crop equivalent to more than all the
wood which the United States now consumes. There will be a mar-
gin of zo per cent or more to take care of the greater requirements
of the future. The only question is how quickly can this be brought
to pass and how much national suffering must be endured before a
perpetual supply of timber is assured on our own soil. National
habits in the use of land and its resources change slowly; and
at best we must travel a slow and painful road before the goal is
reached. .
Underlying this whole question is one of the outstanding facts of
the economic geography of the United States, namely, that one-fourth
of her soil remains today, after three centuries of settlement and ex-
panding agriculture, forest land. There is small prospect that the
area available for growing trees will be reduced materially, if at aH,
for many years tocome. While the inroads of the farm are continuing
here and there, the great tide of forest clearing for cultivation seems
largely to have spent itself. For many years indeed, the abandonment
of farm land in forest growing regions of the older States has prac-
tically offset new clearing on the agricultural frontier.
Wholly aside from the need for timber, the problem of keeping one-
fourth of the soil of the United States productively employed is one
of no small urgency in the national economy. The idleness of cutover
land, following the migration of the sawmills, has already been a wide-
spread cause of depopulation, decline in taxable values, and general
rural bankruptcy. In the busiest timber manufacturing regions of
a few decades ago, there remain today over 8o million acres of prac-
tically unproductive and unused land. No country can afford such
wastage.
Forestry not only is the only way to re-establish an adequate
source of timber in the United States: it is the only way to utilize a
large part of her land—to maintain a vigorous rural population with
332 Agriculture, Conservation and Reclamation [1925
industries, communities and good roads. On both counts, forestry
should become part and parcel of our program of land utilization.
William B. Greeley, in Economic Geography (Worcester, Clark University,
1925), I, 5-14.
80. Sources of Mechanical Power (1925)
BY DIRECTOR GEORGE OTIS SMITH
This article by the Director of the United States Geological Survey summarizes
the power resources of the country. For the famous Muscle Shoals development,
see No. 157 below.—Bibliography: Chester G. Gilbert, The Energy Resources of
the United States (1919); Superpower, compiled by L. T. Beman (1924); World
Power Conference, 1924, Prosperity through Power Development (1925).
HE United States is preéminently the most generous user of
mechanical energy in the world. Before summarizing this
country’s position in its possession of the principal sources of energy—
water, coal, and oil—it will be enlightening to obtain a general idea
of the magnitude of the present drafts upon our supply, as well as
the relative demands made upon these three principal sources.
Tryon and Mann, in estimating the current consumption of energy
in the United States, place the total at more than 25,000 trillion
British thermal units and show that of this total the mineral fuels
supply 87 per cent—coal 65 per cent, oil 18 per cent, natural gas 4
per cent. Water power supplies only 4 per cent, work animals 3 per
cent, and the wind less than one-tenth of 1 per cent. Inasmuch as the
total includes heat energy as well as mechanical energy, firewood is
credited with 6 per cent, so that even in these days the forest still
yields more energy than wind and water combined; but the mineral
fuels now furnish more than six times as much energy as all these others
with work animals added. ‘This increasing dependence on mineral
fuels is further emphasized by the facts that as late as 1880 they were
subordinate to firewood and that prior to 1850 they furnished less
energy than even the work animals.
As the world’s largest users of mechanical energy, and indeed of
most of the products of mines, smelters, mills, and factories, we need
to study every available inventory that can be made of the power
No. 80] Sources of Mechanical Power 333
resources of the United States, especially in comparison with similar
resources of other industrial peoples. In making this comparison we
may conveniently state our national reserves of energy in terms of
present population, thus translating the statistics of our material
resources into per capita units.
The potential water power of the United States, only a small part
of which is developed, is less than 1 horsepower per person, an allot-
ment far below that of the peoples of Norway, Canada, and Sweden;
even Switzerland has twice as large a per capita wealth in water power.
The developed water power credited to the United States, though at
first it seems large, becomes insignificant when it is reduced to per
capita units, being less than one-tenth of 1 horsepower, far below the
third of rı horsepower per capita of Switzerland or Canada and the
seven-tenths of Norway.
In per capita reserves of coal the United States possesses more than
23,000 tons, not including lignite, for every man, woman, and child
of the present population. Other industrial nations rank about as
follows: Great Britain has about 5,000 tons per capita, Germany
probably still owns not less than 4,000 tons, Belgium perhaps 1,500
tons, France probably more than 800 tons, Spain less than 400 tons,
and Japan 150 tons.
We can not state our per capita reserve of petroleum with so much
assurance of quantitative accuracy as we can state reserves of coal or
water, yet the best estimate available shows that considered as a
suture source of energy petroleum occupies a status far different from
that of coal. The share of each man, woman, and child, in the un-
mined petroleum recoverable under present conditions and by present
methods is probably less than too barrels, and the present annual
production is a little over 6 barrels. These simple figures are full of
significance. We undoubtedly have more oil than any other indus-
trial nation, but certainly far from enough.
With this picture of the world distribution of energy resources in
mind we can glance at the map of the United States and consider the
facts of distribution within our own country, which we do well to keep
in mind is continent-wide.
The center of energy for the United States may be determined in
terms either of present production or of potential supply. Considering
first the centers of gravity for the three main sources of energy, we may
334 Agriculture, Conservation and Reclamation [1925
note that these centers are located in what most people in the United
States would term the “Far West.” The center of maximum poten-
tial water power is in the middle of Wyoming, about 35 miles south-
west of Casper. The center of the original tonnage of coal in the
United States is similarly determined as about at the crossing of 41°
north latitude and 99° west longitude, or 30 miles west of Grand
Island, Nebraska. In this determination the lignite regions were not
included, nor the coal that lies at greater depth than 3,000 feet. The
center of the remaining petroleum resources, as estimated by the oil
geologists, is on the New Mexico-Colorado line, northeast of Raton.
It is not practicable to reduce these energy resources—water, coal,
and oil,—to common units of weight and to fix a common center of
gravity for all the potential power awaiting the use of future genera-
tions, but a glance at the map suggests the northeast corner of Colo-
rado as the region that is nearest central for the coal fields, the oil
pools, and the water powers of the United States. It is interesting
to note that western Colorado is the center of the oil shale deposits
of Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado, a reserve of energy far exceeding
in quantity the petroleum resources that are now being so rapidly
depleted.
The mention of future demand for power naturally leads to the
determination of the present centers of production and the trend of
the demand as indicated by comparison of these with earlier deter-
minations. In 1924 the approximate center of coal production was
in Madison County, Ohio, about 30 miles southwest of Columbus.
In 1918 the corresponding center was some 50 miles farther north and
west. The center of oil production is now in northeastern New Mex-
ico, about 40 miles southeast of Raton; in 1918 it was near the Kansas-
Colorado line, somewhat more than 150 miles to the northeast. The
center of electric-power generation in the United States in 1924 was
in Illinois, 50 miles southwest of Chicago, and the shift of this center
since 1920 was somewhat west of south and amounted to less than 272
miles. Another interesting element of the geographic distribution
of the demand for petroleum products is the center of automobile
registration, which in 1924 was in Illinois, close to Peoria. The auto-
mobile thus leads population in its westward course, for the center of
population, as last reported, was in Indiana, 50 miles southwest of
Indianapolis. Indeed, the recent trend of all three centers has been
No. 81] The New Economics of Farming 335
to the west and south, with the exception of that for coal production,
which in the year or two has felt the pull of West Virginia’s marked
increase of output from nonunion mines.
Franklin K. Lane, in writing of the complexity of the task of de-
veloping all our available power for the purpose of making America
the home of the cheapest, the most abundant, and the most service-
able power in the world, said, “There are few who know even one
sector of the great battle front of power.” The fuller knowledge of
the distribution of the supply of energy with which this country is
blessed is an essential part of economic geography.
George Otis Smith, A World of Power in Economic Geography, July, 1925 (Wor-
cester, Clark University), I, 139-142.
perdi.
81. The New Economics of Farming (1926)
BY EX-GOVERNOR FRANK O. LOWDEN
Lowden, a lawyer by training, was a member of Congress from 1906 to rorr, and
Governor of Illinois from 1917 to 1921. Although a man of wealth, he is also a
practical farmer, and has done so much in the way of solving farmers’ problems that
he has more than once been mentioned for the Presidency. For food-production
and farm-operating costs, see articles on various crops in Agriculture Year Book,
1921-1925; on farm finance, see also No. 72 above.—Bibliography as in Nos. 72
and 77 above.
E hear much these days of the inefficiency of the American
farmer. How far this is from the truth let the figures attest.
The Year Book of the United States Department of Agriculture for
1921 is authority for the statement that in America are found less
than 4 per cent of the farmers and farm laborers of the world. And
yet the American farmers produce nearly 70 per cent of the world’s
corn, 60 per cent of the world’s cotton, 50 per cent of the world’s
tobacco, 25 per cent of the world’s oats and hay, 20 per cent of the
world’s wheat and flaxseed, 13 per cent of the world’s barley, 7 per
cent of the world’s potatoes.
In the simpler age, cost of production did not concern the farmer
muchi:
Today all is changed. The farmer is a business man bound by the
336 Agriculture, Conservation and Reclamation [1926
laws which operate in other business fields. His cash expenditures
are large. If he is to produce enough of food and clothing for the
teeming millions in the industrial centers he too must employ indus-
trial means in production. . . . He is a producer no longer for himself
mainly, but to supply the needs of this industrial age. The surplus
which he produces is now the important thing.
Cost of production therefore has become as vital a question with
the farmer as with the manufacturer. And yet when he complains
that he is not receiving cost of production for the things he sells he is
told that the prices of farm products are controlled not by cost of
production but only by the law of supply and demand. It must be
conceded, though, I think, that no one, farmer or manufacturer, can
go on producing indefinitely in this commercial world at less than
cost of production. Does it not follow that some way must be found,
if we are to insure future adequate supply of food and clothing, by
which the producers of these prime necessities can secure at least
the cost to them of producing those necessities?
Under present conditions we have this anomaly: the farmer is not
nearly so likely to suffer from a short crop as from a bumper crop. . . .
. . . Those who tire of the farmer’s complaint say that he must
adjust his production to the probable demand just as industry does.
While no doubt progress can be made through farmer organizations
to better codrdinate supply with demand, he cannot avoid the occa-
sional surplus.
To illustrate, in 1924 the corn crop amounted to 2,300,000,000
bushels. The following year, or 1925, it was 2,900,000,000 bushels.
And yet the 2,900,000,000 bushels were worth less, according to the
Government, by $300,000,000, than the smaller crop of the year
before. Suppose now that the farmers, seeing that the 2,300,000,000
bushels were worth $300,000,000 more than 2,900,000,000 bushels,
had attempted to adjust their acreage to the more profitable smaller
crop. They would have cut it down 25 per cent. Did they do this?
Not at all. They reduced their acreage about one-half of one per
cent. And it is fortunate for the world that they pursued this course.
For, according to the Government’s last estimate, the yield this year
will be close to 225,000,000 bushels less than last year—an amount
less than the average for the five year period, and certainly no more
than we will easily consume. Now if they had effected the reduction
No. 81] The New Economics of Farming 337
of 25 per cent which some of our theoretical friends suggest, we would
have had a crop this year of about 2,000,000,000 bushels, or way below
the nation’s need. The result would have been very high prices for
corn, and what is more important to the consumer, a very burdensome
increase in the price of pork and beef products. Indeed, no one can
say to what price corn would ascend with a 2,000,000,000 bushel crop
when it went to $1.25 a bushel with a 2,300,000,000 bushel crop, as
it did in 1924.
The fact is, the farmer must always plan to raise more than just
vnough if the world is to be fed and clothed. Everyone recognizes
this need. That is why a reasonable carryover from season to season
is regarded by the commercial world as necessary if we are to have a
feeling of security for the coming year.
A surplus, therefore, of the staple products of the farm is inevitable
and necessary. The nation that holds this surplus is the richer for
having it. Industry can plan the better for the future if it knows in
advance that we shall have enough of food and raw materials. The
farmer asks why, if this occasional surplus is a good thing for everyone
else, it should result ina loss tohim....
If there were not surpluses some years, there would be a deficiency
in others, and the world would be lacking in sufficient food and clothes.
If, however, the farmer alone must bear the crushing burden of a sur-
plus, under the slow operation of economic laws, the time will come
when there will be no surplus, and when therefore the world will go
hungry and but half clothed. In the interest, therefore, of society as
well as of the farmer, we must contrive some method by which the
surpluses of the very essentials of life shall become a benefit to him
who produces them and not a burden.
The problem is how to attain this object. It is clear that the indi-
vidual farmer cannot do this. If the producers of any farm com-
modity were completely organized, it is conceivable that they might
accomplish this very end.
Organization of the farmers for the purpose of marketing their
crops collectively is progressing. I believe that some day it will cover
the, entire field. T-
It is doubtful, however, if the codperatives of the staple farm prod:
ucts are ever sufficiently organized to take care of this ever-present
problem of surplus unless some way be found by which the cost of
338 Agriculture, Conservation and Reclamation [1926
handling the surplus is borne equally by all producers of the particu-
lar commodity.
If the producers of any farm product are only partly organized
and attempt to take care of the surplus, the producers of that com-
modity who are not members of the codperative receive the full benefit
of the improved price without bearing any of the burdens incident to
the surplus. . . . It is difficult to maintain the morale of an organiza-
tion when outsiders receive the benefits of the organization in a larger
measure than do the members themselves. For this reason some of
the tobacco codperatives recently have found themselves in great
difficulty.
Let us consider our cotton fora moment. We produce on an average
about 60 per cent of all the cotton in the world. The next largest
producer is India, but India grows an inferior quality of cotton which
is used principally in the Oriental trade. Without American cotton
the cotton mills of Europe would be idle and industrial chaos would
come. Without American cotton England could hardly survive.
And yet we have permitted the spinners of Europe largely to determine
the price for this prime necessity of life. .
The world has long been used to the advantages of mass production.
It now appears that mass selling is to be given a trial.
Some of us have thought we have seen an analogy between the
occasional surplus of staple farm crops and the surplus credit resources
of the banks before the adoption of the federal reserve system. The
resources of the banks as a whole were adequate for the business of
the country as a whole. It frequently happened, however, that an
unusual demand at some particular place exceeded the resources of
that community, while in other sections there were ample credit re-
sources in excess of their need. The federal reserve system was de-
signed, among other things, to mobilize the credit resources of those
banks which had a surplus and employ them where the credit resources
were deficient. It sought to do in reference to space with surplus
credit resources what should be accomplished in reference to time
with the occasional surpluses of the farm.
We have therefore suggested a federal farm board. We have pro-
posed that such board should be vested with power of inquiring into
certain facts. Those facts are: Is there a surplus of some basic farm
product? Does this surplus depress the price below cost of production
No. 81] The New Economics of Farming 339
with a reasonable profit? Are the growers of that product sufficiently
organized coédperatively as to be fairly representative of all the pro-
ducers of that product? If the Board finds that all of these questions
must be answered “yes ” it is then empowered to authorize the coöp-
erative to take control of the surplus. The only aid from the Gov-
ernment which the codperative would require would be that the
Government should distribute among all the producers of the par-
ticular commodity the cost to the codperative of handling the surplus.
Neither the Government nor the Government Board would determine
the price. Nor would even the codperative itself “fix” the price in
any other sense than industry generally determines prices. It, like
every other industry, would study all the conditions affecting the
particular commodity and from time to time decide upon a price which
conditions would seem to warrant. It would simply enjoy the ad-
vantages which come from organized selling. . . .
Commerce and Finance, a leading financial journal of New York,
states that if the South should find itself able to hold and finance
the surplus it
might easily mean a difference of 6 or 7 cents a pound in the average price of
middling cotton for the season.
Is there any simpler method by which this ability could be achieved
than in the program I have outlined? .. .
It is . . . objected to the program I have been discussing that it
will increase the cost of living to the consumer. This may be so tem-
porarily, though in a much less degree than is supposed. However,
taking a long time view, it should have just the opposite effect, as I
think I shall be able to show. .. .
Experience in other industries has shown that the producer and the
consumer are both best served as prices tend to become stabilized.
Progress in an industry is measured by its approach to stabilization
of price. Wide fluctuations in the price of any commodity always
result in a loss to the producer and consumer alike. As one able
writer puts it:
Fluctuations only benefit the speculative middleman. When prices soar, the
producer rarely receives the full value of the increase, but the consumer invariably
has to pay it. A severe fall in wholesale prices is very rarely fully reflected in the
retail price to the consumer, but is always completely felt by the producer. It
would therefore seem that stable prices would benefit both the producer and the
consumer.
340 Agriculture, Conservation and Reclamation [1928
The tendency in America for the last quarter of a century has been
toward stabilized prices save in agriculture alone. In agricultural
products, however, the swing of prices in recent years has been more
violent than ever before. To illustrate, during the years 1923, 1924
and 1925 the price of hogs fluctuated about one hundred per cent.
The fluctuation in the price of pork products to the consumer was
about a third of this. During the same period the price of wheat
fluctuated one hundred per cent. The fluctuation in the price of
bread to the consumer was less than five per cent. It is clear that
the consumer derives no benefit from the low prices at which agricul-
tural products at times have sold.
It is evident that in the interest of the consumer as well as of the
producer we should find some means for stabilizing prices of farm
products. ...
It may be that there is a better solution of the problem than the
one I have suggested. I am not insisting upon any particular remedy.
I only say there is a farm problem of the gravest importance and that
a solution must be found if we would preserve our civilization. . . .
Frank O. Lowden, Address before the American Farm Bureau Federation, 1926.
82. The Pink Invader (1928)
BY VICTOR H. SCHOFFELMAYER
Following the destructive onslaughts of the boll weevil, has come the even more
damaging advance of the pink bollworm, which threatens to be one of the most
serious modern problems of the agricultural south.—For accounts of the battle
against this and other pests, see Agriculture Year Book, 1926 and following years.
AKING its way out of the rugged canyon country which
marks the Texas-Mexican border along the Rio Grande, then
crossing high mountains and some 200 miles of desert and ranching
region, the pink bollworm has invaded the western edge of America’s
Cotton Belt. Between the recent infestation, embracing some 400,000
acres in seven West Texas counties, and the Atlantic seaboard there
lies a continuous cotton field of over 40,000,000 acres.
Thus, the problem of controlling this formidable pest has assumed
national importance. Cotton growers of the South, producing 60
No. 82] The Pink Invader 34I
per cent of the world’s cotton crop, the entire cotton industry of the
United States, representing an investment of approximately three
billion dollars, the cotton oil industry, railroads and steamship lines,
tens of thousands of cotton gins, all are menaced by this destructive
pest. Prompt eradication of the pink bollworm is necessary, for it
is extremely doubtful if the South could continue to raise cotton
under the combined handicap of the boll weevil and tbis latest pest.
The former already has cost the South hundreds of millions of dollars,
although in a measure it can be checked by timely poisoning. But
so far as present knowledge goes poison is ineffective against the pink
bollworm since it spends the greater part of its life within the seed
in the interior of the cotton boll. The worm has been known to live
more than two years inside a cotton boll. It not only destroys the
seed but cuts and stains the cotton fiber. In highly infested fields
the cotton is scarce worth picking. Scientific investigations show
the boll weevil prefers to attack the squares, as the early fruit forms
of cotton are called, whereas the pink bollworm attacks the green
bolls. It is obvious that what the weevil would leave would fall a
prey to the worm.
The only effective method employed against the pink bollworm
has been found to be eradication by depriving the insect of its essential
food—cotton. It can be starved out. Some ten years ago it got into
this country in both Texas and Louisiana. Prompt enforcement of
non-cotton zones succeeded in wiping out the worm where these
methods were applied. No cotton was permitted to be raised for three
years in one case and for two years in subsequent cases.
At that time it first entered the United States in a shipment of cot-
tonseed from Mexico to an oil mill at Hearne, in Southeast Texas, and
was discovered in a cotton field adjacent to the mill on September
10, 1917, by Ivan Shiller, an inspector of the Federal Horticultural
Board. A few weeks later pink bollworms were found in fields near
Anahuac, on the Gulf Coast of Texas, and shortly afterward in cotton
fields in Galveston, Jefferson, Liberty, Harris, Brazoria and Hardin
counties, all of which are situated along the Gulf.
It was plain that there could be no connection between the initial
infestation at Hearne and those on the Gulf Coast. Thorough investi-
gation indicated that these last outbreaks were due to the Galveston
hurricane of 1915, which swept several thousand bales of Mexican
342 Agriculture, Conservation and Reclamation [1928
cotton, stored on the docks at Galveston, on to the mainland of Texas.
At that time many Mexican cotton bales contained cottonseed, due
to faulty ginning. It was only a matter of time and proper conditions
for the worms in the seeds to develop into moths and fly to near-by
cotton fields.
While Federal and state officials were busy with the Southeastern
Texas outbreak the pink bollworm appeared in November, 1918, in
cotton fields in the Big Bend country in extreme West Texas, in
Presidio and Brewster counties. This infestation was traced to Mexi-
can laborers who entered the state carrying infested bedding or other
goods. This is one of the roughest frontiers in the Southwest. The
Rio Grande meanders through deep canyons, but occasionally the
valley widens to a mile or more and cotton fields exist on both sides
of the stream, farmed almost entirely by Mexicans in a rather primi-
tive manner.
In December of 1918 the pink bollworm was found in cotton fields
in Ward, Reeves, and Pecos counties. In 1920 it was found in El Paso.
The same year it spread to the Messilla Valley above El Paso in New
Mexico and to the cotton fields along the Pecos River in the Carlsbad
district.
In 1920 two outbreaks of the worm were discovered in Louisiana,
one in the southwestern corner of the state and the other near Shreve-
port. About the same time infestation to a limited extent was dis-
covered in the Texas black-land belt in Ellis County and another in
North Texas at Marilee.
The man of the hour in this emergency proved to be Dr. W. D.
Hunter, who was in charge of Southern crop insect investigations
for the United States Department of Agriculture. He recognized the
seriousness of the situation and organized a force which for efficiency
probably has never been surpassed.
Doctor Hunter, who died two years ago, gave the remaining ten
years of his life to the control and eradication of the pest. His inti-
mate knowledge of the insect’s life cycle led him to the conclusion
that there is only one certain way of eradicating it—by depriving it
of its essential food, cotton. He conceived the idea of non-cotton
zones, although such an idea was extremely unpopular at a time when
no provisions existed for compensating growers not allowed to raise
cotton. Doctor Hunter’s tact, generalship, knowledge of men and
Wo. 82] The Pink Invader 343
acquaintance with every angle of the trying situation enabled him to
bring public opinion to his side after some of the stormiest mass
meetings ever recorded in Texas history. In 1917 the Texas Legisla-
ture passed an act designed to prevent the establishment of the pink
bollworm in the state. Under this act authority was granted to quar-
antine the districts in which the insect might be found and to establish
zones in which the planting of cotton might be prohibited. Under
this act, in January, 1918, the governor of Texas quarantined the
Hearne district as well as the seven counties in the Trinity Bay sec-
tion of the Gulf Coast.
A safety zone of ten miles in width was thrown around the infested
areas to prevent the worm’s escape. In February of 1918 the governor
issued a proclamation prohibiting the planting of cotton in the quar-
antined areas. Then the fireworks started. Angry protest meetings
were held, at one of which a rope was brought in to impress Doctor
Hunter and his cohorts. These stressful years, no doubt, contributed
to Doctor Hunter’s death, but that his timely and energetic action
prevented the infestation of the South’s cotton is now generally con-
ceded.
Later a law was enacted under which the state of Texas, in codpera-
tion with the Federal Government, reimbursed farmers for all “just
and necessary losses incurred” due to the non-cotton zones. Texas
paid two-thirds of the losses and the Federal Government one-third.
The Southeast Texas outbreak cost Texas about $700,000 for compen-
sation and administration of field work. The Government’s share
was about $250,000 for compensation, but the total cost to it in control
measures is believed to be nearly $3,000,000.
The Louisiana non-cotton zones cost that state about $400,000 and
the Federal Government paid an additional one-third as much.
The idea of compensation is based upon actual loss suffered by
growers. This means that wherever other crops, such as corn, oats,
teed and hay, can be raised the value of these crops is taken into
account in the settlement of claims. In Southeast Texas at the time
the non-cotton zones were enforced cotton sold for as high as thirty-
five cents a pound. Settlement was on a basis of approximately
$18.50 an acre, which was considered just. The settlement in Ellis
County, one of the richest cotton counties in the world, was on a basis
of about $16 an acre.
344 Agriculture, Conservation and Reclamation _[1028
In the western areas of Texas and in New Mexico it was deemea
sufficient to establish regulated zones instead of non-cotton zones
because this area was separated from the main Cotton Belt by a
natural barrier of hundreds of miles. State and Federal road stations
were established on the cardinal highways, at which all auto and truck
or wagon traffic was subjected to rigid inspection.
Yet the bollworm crossed the barrier of mountains and non-cotton
growing region and got into the new cotton-growing area of West
Texas. R. E. McDonald, Texas chief entomologist, has advanced
the view that the moth of the pink bollworm may be carried by winds.
He has arrived at this conclusion by studying the prevailing wind
currents in the Big Bend region, from which he believes the worm
has entered the newly infested counties.
The discovery of the pink bollworm in the seven counties of West
Texas last winter naturally aroused widespread alarm. The effective-
ness of the methods used in combating the pest on its former appear-
ance was recalled. Dr. Charles L. Marlatt, chairman of the Federal
Horticultural Board and chief of the Bureau of Entomology, after a
visit to the old and new infested areas of Texas, announced a plan
of “eradication with adequate compensation.” A resolution was
introduced in Congress by Representative J. P. Buchanan of Texas
and Senator Ransdell of Louisiana, asking for a Federal appropria-
tion of $5,000,000 for eradication of the pest, with full compensa-
tion to growers deprived of the right to raise cotton in non-cotton
zones.
This was emphatically in line with sentiment in Texas, which felt
that this was a national problem. And the growers in the West Texas
country, which has come into recent development as a cotton and
general farming empire, naturally felt they should not bear the brunt
alone. The country is new and many farms and homes are being
bought out of the earnings of the land.
After a stay in Texas, Doctor Marlatt, working closely with the
Texas State Pink Bollworm Commission, was assured that non-cotton
zones might be made to work if the Government would properly
compensate. The Pink Bollworm Commission in its report to Gov-
ernor Dan Moody of Texas stated:
We have decided not to recommend a non-cotton zone in all of the area this
year because of the far-reaching loss and damage that would be occasioned at a
No. 82] The Pink Invader 345
time when it is impossible to provide prompt and adequate compensation on such
a large scale on the part of the State and National Governments.
But, recognizing the possibility—unless regulations should be shown to be
effective and this can only be done by unanimous co-operation—that such drastic
measures may be necessary, we urge that arrangements be at once begun for se-
curing national and state aid, prior to the 1929 crop, that such a non-cotton zone
would require.
The commission recommended a non-cotton zone only for Brewster
County, which produces only about 175 bales of cotton a year, and
for the six other counties recommended regulated zones with steriliza-
tion of all cottonseed and fumigation of all lint.
Farmers in the affected areas rejoiced in the commission’s report
as it left them free to raise cotton. They have promised full compli-
ance with the regulations.
Other Southern states, fearing an invasion of pink bollworms and
having quite enough to do to keep ahead of the boll weevil, sent one
hundred representatives to Memphis last March and after mildly
veiled threats of quarantines against Texas cotton adopted a resolution
indorsing the Buchanan measure in Congress for full Federal compen-
sation in non-cotton zones. Also they urged that steps be taken to
bring about an immediate plan of codperation between Mexico and
the United States to stamp out the pink bollworm.
At the same time that the pink bollworm spread from the Rio
Grande border into the main Texas cotton belt it also spread from
New Mexico into Arizona.
The Texas infestation, old and new, totaling fourteen counties,
embraces 472,300 acres, of which 85,300 acres became infested in 1918
and 1920. In the old area cotton is grown only under irrigation and
yields of as high as two and three bales an acre are not uncommon.
This high yield enables cotton to be grown in spite of the worm. The
farther north the territory the less the damage, since cold winters
check the pest. In the El Paso Valley, which produces the bulk of the
cotton of the border counties, the worm has done very little damage,
in the opinion of the cotton growers.
The newly infested counties of West Texas are in dry-farming terri-
tory. The average three-year yield for this area is 70,000 bales, and
for the old area about 60,000 bales.
Entomologists for a long time had feared that the worm would in
346 Agriculture, Conservation and Reclamation [r928
some manner spread to areas farther eastward and as a precautionary
measure scouts were placed in these areas five years ago. The first
signs pointing to pink bollworm damage appeared in 1925, but no
worms were found and none were found in 1926. But in the winter
of 1927 the pink bollworm was found on the Johnson Brothers Ranch.
The worm was dead and so has been every specimen taken since
that time, which means nothing from the standpoint of danger to the
cotton industry. They would have been alive if a cold winter had not
killed them before they had a chance to select suitable winter quarters.
By the end of March one hundred scouts had located twenty-four
infested cotton fields in Ector, Andrews, Martin, Midland, Howard,
Dawson and Glasscock counties.
Victor H. Schoffelmayer, in Country Gentleman (Philadelphia), July, 1928.
8ss., passim. Copyright by the Curtis Publishing Company.
CHAPTER XVI— MONOPOLIES AND TRUSTS
83. The Northern Securities Case (1904)
BY JUSTICE JOHN MARSHALL HARLAN
After the decision in the Knight case, which seemed to leave the anti-trust laws
with teeth dulled to harmlessness, business combinations flourished. In the North-
ern Securities case they had their first serious conflict with government authority.
For Mr. Justice Harlan, see No. ror below. For Hill, see No. 62 above.—Bibliog-
raphy: Edward Dana Durand, The Trust Problem; Jenks and Clark, The Trust
Problem; William H. Taft, The Anti-Trust Act and the Supreme Court; A. H. Walker,
History of the Sherman Law; Compilation of Anti-Trust Decisions (Senate Docs.,
62d Congress, 1 Sess., No. 111).
S the case as presented by the pleadings and the evidence one of a
combination or a conspiracy in restraint of trade or commerce
among the States, or with foreign states? Is it one in which the de-
fendants are properly chargeable with monopolizing or attempting
to monopolize any part of such trade or commerce? Let us see what
are the facts disclosed by the record.
The Great Northern Railway Company and the Northern Pacific
Railway Company owned, controlled and operated separate lines of
railway—the former road extending from Superior, and from Duluth
and St. Paul, to Everett, Seattle, and Portland, with a branch line
to Helena; the latter, extending from Ashland, and from Duluth and
St. Paul, to Helena, Spokane, Seattle, Tacoma and Portland. The
two lines, main and branches, about 9,000 miles in length, were and
are parallel and competing lines across the continent through the
northern tier of States between the Great Lakes and the Pacific, and
the two companies were engaged in active competition for freight and
passenger traffic, each road connecting at its respective terminals with
lines of railway, or with lake and river steamers, or with seagoing
vessels...
` Early in r901 the Great Northern and Northern Pacific Railway
companies, having in view the ultimate placing of their two systems
347
348 Monopolies and Trusts [1904
under a common control, united in the purchase of the capital stock
of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railway Company, giving in
payment, upon an agreed basis of exchange, the joint bonds of the
Great Northern and Northern Pacific Railway companies, payable in
twenty years from date, with interest at 4 per cent per annum. ...
By this purchase of stock the Great Northern and Northern Pacific
acquired full control of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy main line
and branches.
Prior to November 13, 1901, defendant Hill and associate stock-
holders of the Great Northern Railway Company, and defendant
Morgan and associate stockholders of the Northern Pacific Railway
Company, entered into a combination to form, under the laws of New
Jersey, a holding corporation, to be called the Northern Securities
Company, with a capital stock of $400,000,000, and to which company,
in exchange for its own capital stock upon a certain basis and at a
certain rate, was to be turned over the capital stock, or a controlling
interest in the capital stock, of each of the constituent railway com-
panies, with power in the holding corporation to vote such stock and
in all respects to act as the owner thereof, and to do whatever it might
deem necessary in aid of such railway companies to enhance the value
of their stocks. . . . Thus, as stated in Article VI of the bill, “by
making the stockholders of each system jointly interested in both
systems, and by practically pooling the earnings of both for the benefit
of the former stockholders of each, and by vesting the selection of
the directors and officers of each system in a common body, to wit,
the holding corporation, with not only the power but the duty to
pursue a policy which would promote the interests, not of one system
at the expense of the other, but of both at the expense of the public,
all inducement for competition between the two systems was to be
removed, a virtual consolidation effected, and a monopoly of the
interstate and foreign commerce formerly carried on by the two sys-
tems as independent competitors established.”
In pursuance of this combination and to effect its objects, the de-
fendant, the Northern Securities Company, was organized November
13, 1901, under the laws of New Jersey. .. .
This charter having been obtained, Hill and his associate stock-
holders of the Great Northern Railway Company, and Morgan and
associate stockholders of the Northern Pacific Railway Company,
No. 83] The Northern Securities Case 349
assigned to the Securities Company a controlling amount of the capital
stock of the respective constituent companies upon an agreed basis
of exchange of the capital stock of the Securities Company for each
share of the capital stock of the other companies.
In further pursuance of the combination, the Securities Company
acquired additional stock of the defendant railway companies, issuing
in lieu thereof its own stock upon the above basis, and, at the time of
the bringing of this suit, held, as owner and proprietor, substantially
all the capital stock of the Northern Pacific Railway Company, and,
it is alleged, a controlling interest in the stock of the Great Northern
Railway Company, “and is voting the same and is collecting the
dividends thereon, and in all respects is acting as the owner thereof,
in the organization, management and operation of said railway com-
panies and in the receipt and control of their earnings.”
No consideration whatever, the bill alleges, has existed or will
exist, for the transfer of the stock of the defendant railway companies
to the Northern Securities Company, other than the issue of the
stock of the latter company for the purpose, after the manner, and
upon the basis stated... .
Summarizing the principal facts, it is indisputable upon this record
that under the leadership of the defendants Hill and Morgan the
stockholders of the Great Northern and Northern Pacific Railway
corporations, having competing and substantially parallel lines from
the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean at
Puget Sound combined and conceived the scheme of organizing a
corporation under the laws of New Jersey, which should hold the shares
of the stock of the constituent companies, such shareholders, in lieu
of their shares in those companies, to receive, upon an agreed basis
of value, shares in the holding corporation; that pursuant to such
combination the Northern Securities Company was organized as the
holding corporation through which the scheme should be executed;
and under that scheme such holding corporation has become the
holder—more properly speaking, the custodian—of more than nine-
tenths of the stock of the Northern Pacific, and more than three-
fourths of the stock of the Great Northern, the stockholders of the
companies who delivered their stock receiving upon the agreed basis
shares of stock in the holding corporation. The stockholders of these
two competing companies disappeared, as such, for the moment, but
350 Monopolies and Trusts [1904
immediately reappeared as stockholders of the holding company
which was thereafter to guard the interests of both sets of stockholders
as a unit, and to manage, or cause to be managed, both lines of rail-
road as if held in one ownership. Necessarily by this combination or
arrangement the holding company in the fullest sense dominates the
situation in the interest of those who were stockholders of the constit-
uent companies; as much so, for every practical purpose, as if it had
been itself a railroad corporation which had built, owned, and operated
both lines for the exclusive benefit of its stockholders. Necessarily,
also, the constituent companies ceased, under such a combination,
to be in active competition for trade and commerce along their re-
spective lines, and have become practically one powerful consolidated
corporation, by the name of a holding corporation the principal, if
not the sole, object for the formation of which was to carry out the
purpose of the original combination under which competition between
the constituent companies would cease. Those who were stockholders
of the Great Northern and Northern Pacific and became stockholders
in the holding company are now interested in preventing all competi-
tion between the two lines, and as owners of stock or of certificates
of stock in the holding company, they will see to it that no competition
is tolerated. They will take care that no persons are chosen directors
of the holding company who will permit competition between the
constituent companies. The result of the combination is that all the
earnings of the constituent companies make a common fund in the
hands of the Northern Securities Company to be distributed, not
upon the basis of the earnings of the respective constituent companies,
each acting exclusively in its own interest, but upon the basis of the
certificates of stock issued by the holding company. No scheme or
device could more certainly come within the words of the act—“ com-
bination in the form of a trust or otherwise ... in restraint of
commerce among the several States or with foreign nations,’ —or
could more effectively and certainly suppress free competition be-
tween the constituent companies. This combination is, within the
meaning of the act, a “trust ”; but if not, it is a combination in re-
straint of interstate and international commerce; and that is enough to
bring it under the condemnation of the act. The mere existence of
such a combination and the power acquired by the holding company
as its trustee, constitute a menace to, and a restraint upon, that
|
|
No. 83] The Northern Securities Case 351
freedom of commerce which Congress intended to recognize and pro-
tect, and which the public is entitled to have protected. If such
combination be not destroyed, all the advantages that would naturally
come to the public under the operation of the general laws of compe-
tition, as between the Great Northern and Northern Pacific Railway
companies, will be lost, and the entire commerce of the immense
territory in the northern part of the United States between the Great
Lakes and the Pacific at Puget Sound will be at the mercy of a single
holding corporation, organized in a State distant from the people of
that territory: ior
By the decree in the Circuit Court it was found and adjudged that
the defendants had entered into a combination or conspiracy in re-
straint of trade or commerce among the several States, such as the
act of Congress denounced as illegal; and that all of the stocks of the
Northern Pacific Railway Company and all the stock of the Great
Northern Railway Company, claimed to be owned and held by the
Northern Securities Company, was acquired, and is by it held, in
virtue of such combination or conspiracy, in restraint of trade and com-
merce among the several States... .
If there was a combination or conspiracy in violation of the act of
Congress, between the stockholders of the Great Northern and the
Northern Pacific Railway companies, whereby the Northern Secu-
rities Company was formed as a holding corporation, and whereby
interstate commerce over the lines of the constituent companies was
restrained, it must follow that the court, in execution of that act, and
to defeat the efforts to evade it, could prohibit the parties to the com-
bination from doing the specific things which being done would effect
the result denounced by the act. To say that the court could not go
so far is to say that it is powerless to enforce the act or to suppress
the illegal combination, and powerless to protect the rights of the
public as against that combination. .. .
The Circuit Court has done only what the actual situation de-
manded. Its decree has done nothing more than to meet the require-
ments of the statute. It could not have done less without declaring
its impotency in dealing with those who have violated the law. The
decree, if executed, will destroy, not the property interests of the
original stockholders of the constituent companies, but the power of
the holding corporation as the instrument of an illegal combination
352 Monopolies and Trusts [1906
of which it was the master spirit, to do that which, if done, would
restrain interstate and international commerce. The exercise of that
power being restrained, the object of Congress will be accomplished;
left undisturbed, the act in question will be valueless for any practical
purpose.
Justice Harlan, Opinion of U. S. Supreme Court in Northern Securities Company
v. United States, 193 U. S. Reports, 320-358 passim.
—————+ aue
84. Government Ownership of Railroads (1906)
BY WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN
William Jennings Bryan, of Nebraska, member of the House of Representatives
from 1891 to 1895, was three times the candidate of the Democratic Party for Pres-
ident of the United States; but his highest office was that of Secretary of State under
President Wilson. That position he resigned in 1915 because he was unwilling to
participate in a war administration. His views on government ownership are ex-
pressed in several of his public addresses. The experience of government opera-
tion of railroads during the war was enough to satisfy most citizens that its disad-
vantages exceeded its merits —Bibliography, mainly on the question of government
regulation: J. H. Bede, Railroad Rate Legislation; Felix Frankfurter, Cases under
the Interstate Commerce Act; E. R. Johnson, American Railway Transportation;
F. H. Spearman, Strategy of Great Railroads; F. H. Dixon, Railroads and Govern-
ment.
F you ask me whether the question of Government ownership will
be an issue in the campaign of 1908, I answer, I do not know. If
you ask me whether it ought to be in the platform, I reply, I cannot
tell until I know what the Democratic voters think upon the subject.
If the Democrats believe that the next platform should contain a plank
in favor of Government ownership, then that plank ought to be in-
cluded. If the Democrats think it ought not to contain such a plank,
then such a plank ought not to be included. It rests with the party
to make the platform, and individuals can only advise. I have spoken
for myself and for myself only, and I did not know how the suggestion
would be received. I am now prepared to confess to you that it has
been received more favorably than I expected. It has not been
treated as harshly as I thought possibly it would be treated. That
it would be gravely discussed by others I hoped. There is this, how-
ever, that I do expect, namely, that those Democrats who opposed
No. 84] Government Ownership of Railroads 353
Government ownership will accompany their declaration against it
with the assertion that they will favor Government ownership when-
ever they are convinced that the country must choose between Gov-
ernment ownership of the roads and railroad ownership of the Gov-
ernment. I cannot conceive how a Democrat can declare, no matter
to what extent the railroads carry their interference with politics and
their corruption of officials, he is still opposed to Government owner-
ship. I think I may also reasonably expect that Democrats who
oppose Government ownership will say that if Government ownership
must come, they prefer a system whereby the State may be preserved
and the centralizing influence be reduced to a minimum. Such a plan
I have proposed, and I have proposed it because I want the people to
consider it and not be driven to the federal ownership of all railroads
as the only alternative to private ownership. The dual plan, that is,
federal ownership of trunk lines and State ownership of local lines,
not only preserves the State, and even strengthens its position but
it permits the gradual adoption of Government ownership as the people
of different sections are ready to adopt it.
I have been slow in reaching this position and I can therefore be
patient with those who now stand where I stood for vears, urging
strict regulation and hoping that that would be found feasible. I
still advocate strict regulation and shall rejoice if experience proves
that that regulation can be made effective. I will go farther than
that and say that I believe we can have more efficient regulation under
a Democratic administration with a Democratic Senate and House
than we are likely to have under a Republican administration with a
Republican Senate and House, and yet I would not be honest with you
if I did not frankly admit that observation has convinced me that no
such efficient regulation is possible, and that Government ownership
can be undertaken on the plan outlined with less danger to the country
than is involved in private ownership as we have had it or as we are
likely to have it. I have been brought to regard public ownership
as the ultimate remedy by railroad history which is as familiar to
you as to me. Among the reasons that have led me to believe that
we must, in the end, look to Government for relief, I shall mention
two or three. First and foremost is the corrupting influence of the
railroad in politics. There is not a State in the union that has not
felt this influence to a greater or less extent. The railroads have
354 Monopolies and Trusts [1906
insisted upon controlling legislatures; they have insisted upon naming
executives; they have insisted upon controlling the nomination and
appointment of judges; they have endeavored to put their repre-
sentatives on tax boards that they might escape just taxation; they
have watered their stock, raised their rates and enjoined the States
whenever they have attempted to regulate rates; they have obstructed
legislation when hostile to them, and advanced, by secret means,
legislation favorable to them. Let me give you an illustration:
The interstate commerce law was enacted nineteen years ago. After
about nine years this law was practically nullified by the Supreme
Court, and for ten years the railroad influence has been sufficient in
the Senate and House to prevent an amendment asked for time and
again by the Interstate Commerce Commission. That railroad in-
fluence has been strong enough to keep the Republican party from
adopting any platform declaration in favor of rate regulation. When
the President, following three Democratic platforms, insisted upon
regulation, he was met with the opposition of the railroads, and every
step, every point gained in favor of the people, was gained after a
strenuous fight. The bill was improved by an amendment proposed
by Senator Stone, of Missouri, restoring the criminal penalty which
had been taken out of the interstate commerce law by the Elkins law.
The same amendment had been presented, in substance, in the House,
by Congressman James, of Kentucky, and had been defeated by
Republican votes. The bill was further improved by an amendment
proposed by Senator Culberson, of Texas, forbidding the use of passes,
and it would have been still further improved by the amendment
proposed by Senator Bailey, of Texas, limiting the court review, but
the railroad influence was strong enough to defeat this amendment.
I have no idea that the railroads are going to permit regulation
without a struggle and I fear that their influence will be strong enough
very much to delay, if it does not entirely defeat, remedial legislation.
You, in this State, know something of the railroad in politics. When
I visited the State and spoke for Mr. Goebel, I heard him charge upon
every platform that the railroads were spending large sums in oppo-
sition to his election, and I have always believed that the railroad
influence was largely responsible for the assassination of that brave
defender of the rights of the people.
Another reason which has led me to favor Government ownership,
No. 84] Government Ownership of Railroads 355
is the fact that the people are annually plundered of an enormous sum
by extortionate rates; that places are discriminated against and indi-
viduals driven out of business by favoritism shown by the railroads.
You say that all these things can be corrected without interference
with private ownership. I shall be glad if experience proves that
they can be, but Ino longer hope for it. President Roosevelt, although
expressing himseli against Government ownership, has announced
that only successful regulation can prevent Government ownership.
Is there any Democrat who is not willing to go as far as President
Roosevelt and admit the necessity of Government ownership in case
the people are convinced of the failure of regulation? I cannot be-
lieve it.
Then, while we attempt to make regulation effective, while we
endeavor to make the experiment under the most favorable conditions,
namely with the Democratic party in power, let us not hesitate to
inform the railroads that they must keep out of politics; that they
must keep their hands off of legislation; that they must abstain from
interfering with the party machinery and warn them that they can
only maintain their private control of the railroads by accepting such
regulation as the people may see fit to apply in their own interest and
for their own protection. Without this threat our cause would be
hopeless. It remains to be seen whether, with this threat, we shall
be able to secure justice to the shippers, to the traveling public and
to the taxpayers.
Speech at Louisville, Ky., 1906.
356 Monopolies and Trusts [1912
85. The Coal Monopoly (1912)
BY JUSTICE HORACE H. LURTON
The attempt to control anthracite coal production was executed with great tech-
nical skill, but the Supreme Court looked through the apparent formalities of the
scheme at its actual effect, and then acted to dissolve the combination. For Mr.
Justice Lurton, see No. ror below.—Bibliography: Chester G. Gilbert and Joseph
E. Pogue, The Energy Resources of the United States (1919); Arthur M. Hull, Coal
Men of America; a Biographical and Historical Review of the World’s Greatest In-
dustry (1918); What the Coal Commission Found (1925), based on the report of the
commission in five volumes; Eliot Jones, Te Anthracite Coal Combination in the
United States (1914).
HE bill alleges that anthracite coal is an article of prime necessity
as a fuel and finds its market mainly in the New England and
Middle Atlantic States. The deposits of the coal, with unimportant
exceptions, lie in the State of Pennsylvania, but do not occupy a
continuous field, though found in certain counties adjoining in the east-
ern half of the State, and embrace an area of 484 square miles. .. .
From an early day it has been the settled policy of the State of Penn-
sylvania to encourage the development of this coal region by canal
and railroad construction, which would furnish transportation to con-
venient shipping points at tidewater. One of the defendant carriers,
the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Company, was given the
power to acquire coal lands and engage in the business of mining and
selling coal in addition to the business of a common carrier, and all
railroad companies were permitted to aid in the production of coal
by assisting coal-mining companies through the purchase of capital
stock and bonds. Thus, it has come about that the defendant car-
riers not only dominate the transportation of coal from this anthracite
region to the great distributing ports at New York Harbor, but also
through their controlled coal-producing companies, produce and sell
about seventy-five per cent of the annual supply of anthracite. Asa
further direct consequence of the State authorized alliance between
coal-producing and coal-transporting companies, it has come about
that the defendant carrier companies and the coal-mining companies
affiliated with the carrier companies now own or control about ninety
per cent of the entire unmined area of anthracite. . .
Thus, there exists, independently of any agreement, combination
No. 85] The Coal Monopoly 357
or contract between the several defendant carrier companies for the
purpose of suppressing competition among them, this condition:
First. Excluding two carrier companies not made defendants
which reach but a limited number of collieries, the Pennsylvania Rail-
road Company and the New York, Ontario & Western Railroad
Company, the six carrier companies who are defendants are shown to
control the only means of transportation between this great anthracite
deposit and tidewater, from whence the product may be distributed
by rail and water to the great consuming markets of the Atlantic
Coast States.
Second. These carriers and their subsidiary coal-mining and selling
companies produce and sell about seventy-five per cent of the total
annual supply of anthracite coal. Of the remainder, the independent
operators mentioned above produce about twenty per cent.
The chief significance of the fact that the six carrier defendants
control substantially the only means for the transportation of coal
from the mines to distributing points at tidewater is in the fact that
they, collectively, also control nearly three-fourths of the annual
supply of anthracite which there finds a market. The situation is
therefore one which invites concerted action and makes exceedingly
easy the accomplishment of any purpose to dominate the supply and
control the prices at seaboard. The one-fourth of the total annual
supply which comes from independent operators in the same region
has been sold in competition with the larger supply of the defendants.
If, by concert of action, the source of competition be removed, the
monopoly which the defendants, acting together, may exert over the
production and sale will be complete.
This bill avers that the defendants have combined for the purpose
of securing their collective grip upon the anthracite coal supply by
exerting their activities to shut out from the district any new line of
transportation from the mines to tidewater points, and to shut out
from competition at tidewater the coal of independent operators with
their own coal... .
The theory upon which the bill is framed and upon which the case
has been presented by counsel is, that there exists between the de-
fendants a general combination to control the anthracite coal industry,
both in respect of mining and transportation from the mines to the
general consuming markets reached from shipping points at New York
358 Monopolies and Trusts [1912
Harbor, and the production and sale of coal throughout the United
States.
The contentior. is that this general combination is established, first,
by evidence of an agreement between the carrier defendants to appor-
tion between themselves the total coal tonnage transported from the
mines to tidewater according to a scale of percentages; second, by a
combination between them, through the instrumentality of the de-
fendant, the Temple Iron Company, to prevent the construction of a
new and competing line of railroad from the mines to tidewater; third,
by a combination between the defendants by means of a series of
identical contracts for the control of the coal produced by independ-
ent coal operators, thereby preventing competition in the markets of
other States between the coal of such independent operators and that
produced by the defendants; and, finally, by certain so-called contrib-
utory combinations, already referred to, between some, but not all,
of the defendants.
Aside from the particular transactions averred as “steps” or “acts
in futherance” of a presupposed general combination, the charge of
such a combination is general and indefinite. . . .
The capital stock of the Temple Iron Company, aggregating only
$240,000, was all secured. That company was then operating a small
iron furnace near Reading. Its assets were small, but its charter was
a special legislative charter which gave it power to engage in almost
any sort of business, and to increase its capital substantially at will.
Control of that company having been secured, it was used as the
instrument for the purpose intended. .. .
The Temple Company increased its capital stock to $2,500,000 and
issued mortgage bonds aggregating $3,500,000. Simpson & Watkins
agreed to sell to the Temple Company their properties for something
near $5,000,000. They accordingly transferred to the Temple Com-
pany the capital shares in the several coal companies, holding the
title to their eight collieries, and received in exchange $2,260,000 in
the shares of the Temple Company, and $3,500,000 of its mortgage
bondsk sah
Thus, it came about that when this bill was filed the stock of the
Temple Company, which, as seen, is a mere holding company for
the several defendant carrier companies, was owned by the defend-
ANTS. Paces
No. 85] The Coal Monopoly 359
That under the law of Pennsylvania each of the defendant carrier
companies has the power to acquire and hold the stock of coal-produc-
ing companies may be true. That the Temple Company may, under
the same law, have the power to acquire and hold the capital stock
of the Simpson & Watkins’ collieries may also be conceded. But if
the defendant carriers did, as we have found to be the fact, combine
to restrain the freedom of interstate commerce either in the transporta-
tion or in the sale of anthracite coal in the markets of other States,
and adopted as a means for that purpose the Temple Company, and
through it, the control of the great Simpson & Watkins’ collieries,
the parts of the general scheme, however lawful considered alone,
become parts of an illegal combination under the Federal statute
which it is the duty of the court to dissolve, irrespective of how the
legal title to the shares is held... .
We are in entire accord with the view of the court below in holding
that the transaction involved a concerted scheme and combination
for the purpose of restiaining commerce among the States in plain
violation of the act of Congress of July 2, 1890... .
The decree of the court below is affirmed as to the Temple Iron
Company combination.
Justice Lurton, Opinion of U. S. Supreme Court in United States v. Reading
Company, 226 I. 3, Reports, 338-373 passim.
360 Monopolies and Trusts [1912
86. A Liberal’s Protest (1912)
BY SENATOR ROBERT M. LA FOLLETTE, SR.
La Follette (1855-1925) was one of the great independent leaders of political
thought in the United States. He sought first to accomplish reforms by working
from within the Republican organization in Wisconsin. In that state he served
several terms as Governor, and later was repeatedly elected to the United States
Senate. In 1924 he was the candidate of the Progressive Party (successor of the
1912 party of that name) for the Presidency. Aggressive and sincere, though some-
times erratic, he was a genuine leader, and his proposals for Republican party
platforms, though ridiculed when offered in the conventions, were usually
adopted four or eight years afterward.—Bibliography as in Nos. 83 and 84 above.
HE trust problem has become so interwoven in our legal and
industrial system that no single measure or group of measures
can reach all of it. It must be picked off at every point where it shows
its head.
Every combination of a manufacturing business with the control
of transportation, including pipe lines, should be prohibited, in order
that competitors may have equal facilities for reaching markets.
The control of limited sources of raw material like coal, iron ore,
or timber, by a manufacturing corporation, should be broken up and
these resources should be opened to all manufacturers on equal terms.
It is claimed on all sides that competition has failed. I deny it.
Fair competition has not failed. It has been suppressed. When
competitors are shut out from markets by discrimination, and denied
either transportation, raw material or credit on equal terms, we do
not have competition. We have the modern form of highway robbery.
The great problem of legislation before us is first for the people to
resume control of their government, and then to protect themselves
against those who are throttling competition by the aid of government.
I do not say that competition does not have its evils. Labor organi-
zations are the struggling protest against cutthroat competition.
The anti-trust law was not intended or understood to apply to them.
They should be exempt from its operation.
The tariff should be brought down to the difference in labor cost
of the more efficient plants and the foreign competitor, and where
there is no difference the tariff should be removed. Where the pro-
No. 86] A Liberal’s Protest 361
tective tariff is retained its advantages must be passed along to labor,
for whose benefit the manufacturer contends it is necessary.
The patent laws should be so amended that the owners of patents
will be compelled to develop them fully or permit their use on equal
terms by others.
More vital and menacing than any other power that supports
trusts is the control of credit through the control of the people’s
savings and deposits. When the Emergency Currency Bill was before
Congress in 1908, Senator Aldrich slipped into the conference report
certain provisions which he had withdrawn in the Senate, and with-
drew provisions which he had first included. He eliminated protection
against promotion schemes, excluded penalties for false reporting,
dropped provisions for safeguarding reserves, inserted provisions for
accepting railroad bonds as security. Now he comes with another
plausible measure to remedy the admitted evils of our inelastic bank-
ing system.
When we realize that the control of credit and banking is the greatest
power that the trusts possess to keep out competitors, we may well
question their sincerity in offering a patriotic measure to dispossess
themselves of that power. It is the people’s money that is expected
to give security to this plan and the people must and shali control it.
The proposed Aldrich Currency Plan is the product. of a commission
composed of men who are or have been members of the committees
of the two houses of Congress, which have controlled all legislation
relating to currency and banking. With such a record it behooves
the public to examine with the utmost care any plan which they rec-
ommend, however plausible it may appear upon its face. A critical
study of the scheme of this commission will convince any student of
government finance, that under the guise of providing elasticity to
our currency system, it is in reality an adroit means of further con-
centration and control of the money and credits of the United States
under a fifty-year franchise, augmenting the power of those who
already dominate the banking and insurance resources of the country.
Our National Banking Law is a patchwork of legislation. It should
be thoroughly revised. And all authorities agree that a comprehensive
plan for an emergency currency is vitally important. When the
basic principle of such a plan is once determined, when it is settled
that government controlled banks are to be, in fact, controlled by
262 Monopolies and Trusts [191:
the government in the public interest, the details can easily be worked
out.
An emergency currency circulation should be backed by proper
reserves, issued only against commercial paper that represents actual
and legitimate business transactions. No plan should be adopted
which admits of control by banking interests which, under existing
conditions, means, in the end, control by the great speculative banking
groups.
In all our plans for progressive legislation, it must not be forgotten
that we are only just beginning to get control of the railroads. The
present law is an improvement, but the Interstate Commerce Com-
mission requires to be greatly strengthened. It should have a much
larger appropriation, enabling it to prosecute investigations in all
parts of the country. It should make physical valuations of the rail-
roads, eliminating watered stock, monopoly values and the unwar-
ranted inflation of railway terminals to conceal monopoly values.
And the Commerce Court should be abolished as a mere subterfuge
interposed to handicap the commission.
As a first necessary step for the regulation of interstate commerce,
we must ascertain the reasonable value of the physical property of
railroads, justly inventoried, upon a sound economic basis, distin-
guishing actual values from monopoly values derived from violations
of law, and must make such discriminating values the base line for
determining rates. The country should know how much of the eight-
een billions of capitalization was contributed by those who own the
railroads, and how much by the people themselves. We should also
provide for the extension of the powers and the administrative con-
trol of the Interstate Commerce Commission.
I have sketched the growth and power of the great interests that
to-day control our property and our governments. I have shown how
subtle and elusive, yet relentless, they are. Rising up against them
is the confused voice of the people. Their heart is true but their
eyes do not yet see all the intricate sources of power. Who shall show
them? There are only two agencies that in any way can reach the
whole people. These are the press and the platform. But the plat-
form in no way compares with the press in its power of continuous
repeated instruction.
One would think that in a democracy like ours, people seeking the
No. 86] A Liberal’s Protest 363
truth, able to read and understand, would find the press their eager
and willing instructors. Such was the press of Horace Greeley, Henry
Raymond, Charles A. Dana, Joseph Medill, and Horace Rublee.
But what do we find has occurred in the past few years since the
money power has gained control of our industry and government?
It controls the newspaper press. The people know this. Their con-
fidence is weakened and destroyed. No longer are the editorial
columns of newspapers a potent force in educating public opinion.
The newspapers, of course, are still patronized for news. But even
as to news, the public is fast coming to understand that wherever news
items bear in any way upon the control of government by business,
the news is colored; so confidence in the newspaper as a newspaper
is being undermined.
Cultured and able men are still to be found upon the editorial staffs
of all great dailies, out the public understands them to be hired men
who no longer express honest judgments and sincere conviction, who
write what they are told to write, and whose judgments are salaried.
To the subserviency of the press to special interests in no small
degree is due the power and influence and prosperity of the weekly
and monthly magazines. A decade ago young men trained in journal-
ism came to see this control of the newspapers of the country. They
saw also an unoccupied field. And they went out and built up great
periodicals and magazines. They were free.
Their pages were open to publicists and scholars and liberty, and
justice and equal rights found a free press beyond the reach of the
corrupt influence of consolidated business and machine politics. We
entered upon a new era.
The periodical, reduced in price, attractive and artistic in dress,
strode like a young giant into the arena of public service. Filled with
this spirit, quickened with human interest, it assailed social and polit-
ical evils in high places and low. It found the power of the public
service corporation and the evil influences of money in the municipal
government of every large city. It found franchises worth millions
of dollars secured by bribery; police in partnership with thieves and
crooks and prostitutes. It found juries “fixed” and an established
business plying its trade between litigants and the back door of blink-
ing justice.
It found Philadelphia giving away franchises, franchises not sup-
364 Monopolies and Trusts [1912
posedly or estimated to be worth $2,500,000, but for which she had
been openly offered and refused $2,500,000. Milwaukee they found
giving franchises worth $8,000,000 against the protests of her indignant
citizens. It found Chicago robbed in tax-payments of immense
value by corporate owners of property through fraud and forgery
on a gigantic scale; it found the aldermen of St. Louis, organized to
boodle the city with a criminal compact, on file in the dark corner of
a safety deposit vault.
The free and independent periodical turned her searchlight on state
legislatures, and made plain as the sun at noonday the absolute con-
trol of the corrupt lobby. She opened the closed doors of the secret
caucuses, the secret committee, the secret conference, behind which
United States Senators and Members of Congress betrayed the public
interest into the hands of railroads, the trusts, the tariff mongers,
and the centralized banking power of the country. She revealed the
same influences back of judicial and other appointments. She took
the public through the great steel plants and into the homes of the
men who toil twelve hours a day and seven days in the week. And the
public heard their cry of despair. She turned her camera into the
mills and shops where little children are robbed of every chance of
life that nourishes vigorous bodies and sound minds, and the pinched
faces and dwarfed figures told their pathetic story on her clean white
pages.
The control of the newspaper press is not the simple and expensive
one of ownership and investment. There is here and there a “kept
sheet ” owned by a man of great wealth to further his own interests.
But the papers of this class are few. The control comes through that
community of interests, that interdependence of investments and
credits which ties the publisher up to the banks, the advertisers and
the special interests.
We may expect this same kind of control, sooner or later, to reach
out for the magazines. But more than this: I warn you of a subtle
new peril, the centralization of advertising, that will in time seek to
gag you. What has occurred on the small scale in almost every city
in the country will extend to the national scale, and will ere long close
in on magazines. No men ever faced graver responsibilities. None
have ever been called to a more unselfish, patriotic service. I believe
that when the final test comes, you will not be found wanting; you will
No. 87] Regulation of Trusts 365
not desert and leave the people to depend upon the public platform
alone, but you will hold aloft the lamp of Truth, lighting the way for
the preservation of representative government and the liberty of the
American people.
Robert M. La Follette, La Follette’s Autobiography (Robert M. La Follette Co.,
1912), 789-797 passim.
87. Regulation of Trusts (1914)
BY PRESIDENT WOODROW WILSON
The influence of President Wilson was largely responsible for the passage of the
Clayton Act, intended to add to the effectiveness of the existing anti-trust legisla-
tion. For Wilson see Nos. 129-132 below.—Bibliography as in No. 83 above; see
also G. C. Henderson, Federal Trade Commission; Herman Oliphant, Cases on Trade
Regulation; William Z. Ripley, Trusts, Pools, and Corporations.
N my report “On the State of the Union,” which I had the priv-
ilege of reading to you on the 2d of December last, I ventured to
reserve for discussion at a later date the subject of additional legis-
lation regarding the very difficult and intricate matter of trusts and
monopolies. The time now seems opportune to turn to that great
question; not only because the currency legislation, which absorbed
your attention and the attention of the country in December, is now
disposed of, but also because opinion seems to be clearing about us
with singular rapidity in this other great field of action. In the matter
of the currency it cleared suddenly and very happily after the much-
debated Act was passed; in respect of the monopolies which have
multiplied about us and in regard to the various means by which they
have been organized and maintained it seems to be coming to a clear
and all but universal agreement in anticipation of our action, as if
by way of preparation, making the way easier to see and easier to set
out upon with confidence and without confusion of counsel. . . .
The great business men who organized and financed monopoly and
those who administered it in actual everyday transactions have year
after year, until now, either denied its existence or justified it as nec-
essary for the effective maintenance and development of the vast
business processes of the country in the modern circumstances of
366 Monopolies and Trusts [1914
trade and manufacture and finance; but all the while opinion has
made head against them. The average business man is convinced
that the ways of liberty are also the ways of peace and the ways of
success as well; and at last the masters of business on the great scale
have begun to yield their preference and purpose, perhaps their judg-
ment also, in honorable surrender.
What we are purposing to do, therefore, is, happily, not to hamper
or interfere with business as enlightened business men prefer to do it,
or in any sense to put it under the ban. The antagonism between
business and government is over. We are now about to give expression
to the best business judgment of America, to what we know to be the
business of conscience and honor of the land. The Government and
business men are ready to meet each other halfway in a common effort
to square business methods with both public opinion and the law.
The best informed men of the business world condemn the methods
and processes and consequences of monopoly as we condemn them;
and the instinctive judgment of the vast majority of business men
everywhere goes with them. We shall now be their spokesmen. That
is the strength of our position and the sure prophecy of what will ensue
when our reasonable work is done.
When serious contest ends, when men unite in opinion and purpose,
those who are to change their ways of business joining with those who
ask for the change, it is possible to effect it in the way in which prudent
and thoughtful and patriotic men would wish to see it brought about,
with as few, as slight, as easy and simple business readjustments as
possible in the circumstances, nothing essential disturbed, nothing
torn up by the roots, no parts rent asunder which can be left in whole-
some combination. Fortunately, no measures of sweeping or novel
change are necessary. It will be understood that our object is not to
unsettle business or anywhere seriously to break its established
courses athwart. On the contrary, we desire the laws we are now
about to pass to be the bulwarks and safeguards of industry against
the forces that have disturbed it. What we have to do can be done
in a new spirit, in thoughtful moderation, without revolution of any’
untoward kind.
We are all agreed that “private monopoly is indefensible and intol-
erable,” and our programme is founded upon that conviction. It will
be a comprehensive but not a radical or unacceptable programme
No. 87] Regulation of Trusts 307
and these are its items, the changes which opinion deliberately sanc-
tions and for which business waits:
It waits with acquiescence, in the first place, for laws which will
effectually prohibit and prevent such interlockings of the personnel
of the directorates of great corporations—banks and railroads, indus-
trial, commercial, and public service bodies—as in effect result in mak-
ing those who borrow and those who lend practically one and the same,
those who sell and those who buy but the same persons trading with
one another under different names and in different combinations,
and those who affect to compete in fact partners and masters of some
whole field of business. Sufficient time should be allowed, of course,
in which to effect these changes of organization without inconvenience
or confusion.
Such a prohibition will work much more than a mere negative good
by correcting the serious evils which have arisen because, for example,
the men who have been the directing spirits of the great investment
banks have usurped the place which belongs to independent industrial
management working in its own behoof. It will bring new men, new
energies, a new spirit of initiative, new blood, into the management
of our great business enterprises. It will open the field of industrial
development and origination to scores of men who have been obliged
to serve when their abilities entitled them to direct. It will immensely
hearten the young men coming on and will greatly enrich the business
activities of the whole country. .
The business of the country awaits also, has long awaited and has
suffered because it could not obtain, further and more explicit legisla-
tive definition of the policy and meaning of the existing antitrust
law. Nothing hampers business like uncertainty. Nothing daunts
or discourages it like the necessity to take chances, to run the risk
of falling under the condemnation of the law before it can make sure
just what the lawis. Surely we are sufficiently familiar with the actual
processes and methods of monopoly and of the many hurtful restraints
of trade to make definition possible, at any rate to the limits of what
experience has disclosed. These practices, being now abundantly
disclosed, can be explicitly and item by item forbidden by statute in
such terms as will practically eliminate uncertainty, the law itself
and the penalty being made equally plain.
And the business men of the country desire something more than
368 Monopolies and Trusts [1974
that the menace of legal process in these matters be made explicit
and intelligible. They desire the advice, the definite guidance and
information which can be supplied by an administrative body, an
interstate trade commission.
The opinion of the country would instantly approve of such a com-
mission. It would not wish to see it empowered to make terms with
monopoly or in any sort to assume control of business, as if the Gov-
ernment made itself responsible. It demands such a commission only
as an indispensable instrument of information and publicity, as a clear-
ing house for the facts by which both the public mind and the managers
of great business undertakings should be guided, and as an instru-
mentality for doing justice to business where the processes of the courts
or the natural forces of correction outside the courts are inadequate
to adjust the remedy to the wrong in a way that will meet all the
equities and circumstances of the case... .
Inasmuch as our object and the spirit of our action in these matters
is to meet business halfway in its processes of self-correction and
disturb its legitimate course as little as possible, we ought to see to
it, and the judgment of practical and sagacious men of affairs every-
where would applaud us if we did see to it, that penalties and punish-
ments should fall, not upon business itself, to its confusion and inter-
ruption, but upon the individuals who use the instrumentalities of
business to do things which public policy and sound business practice
condemn. Every act of business is done at the command or upon
the initiative of some ascertainable person or group of persons. These
should be held individually responsible and the punishment should
fall upon them, not upon the business organization of which they
make illegal use. It should be one of the main objects of our legisla-
tion to divest such persons of their corporate cloak and deal with them
as with those who do not represent their corporations, but merely by
deliberate intention break the law. Business men the country through
would, I am sure, applaud us if we were to take effectual steps to see
that the officers and directors of great business bodies were prevented
from bringing them and the business of the country into disrepute
and danger.
Woodrow Wilson, Address to Congress, January 20, 1914.
No. 88] Railroad Regulation 369
88. Railroad Regulation (1903-1914)
BY PROFESSOR FREDERIC AUSTIN OGG (1918)
For Ogg see No. 21 above.—Bibliography as in No. 84 above.
Shes HE carriers had been feeling the losses arising from rebating
and excessive rate-cutting, and Paul Morton, president of
the Santa Fé system, volunteered to aid the government in putting an
end to these unlawful practices. President Roosevelt seized the op-
portunity by stirring to action the Interstate Commerce Commission
and the Department of Justice, and by securing from Congress the
needed legislation. The Elkins amendments were passed practically
without opposition, and dealt solely with inequalities of rates. They
forbade variations from any published tariff (whether or not involving
discrimination), made liable to punishment not only the railway
corporation itself, but its officers and agents, and also shippers know-
ingly accepting favors; abolished the penalty of imprisonment pro-
vided for by an amendment of 1889; and specially authorized injunc-
tion proceedings to restrain carriers from violating the law.
Consolidation was checked, and the power of the government to
deal with all great corporations was vindicated, by a decision handed
down by the Supreme Court in the Northern Securities Case, March
14, 1904, wherein it was held that a merger of two or more competing
roads was contrary to the Sherman anti-trust law of 1890. This was
a great triumph; and the Administration, hitherto deterred by lack of
power, threw itself unreservedly into the work of railway and trust reg-
ulation. The “big stick” began to be brandished, the “square deal”
to be preached.
The chief railroad problem that remained was rate-making. In his
annual message of December 6, 1904, the President urged that the
Interstate Commerce Commission be given power to fix exact rates;
and on February 8, 1906, the House passed, by a vote of 346 to 7,
a comprehensive measure introduced by Chairman Hepburn of the
Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee. The Senate wavered,
and the debates were long and brilliant. But under executive pressure,
and in the teeth of the most powerful railroad lobby in the history of
370 Monopolies and Trusts [1903-1914
the country, it at length fell into line, with only three dissenting
votes. June 29, 1906, the bill became law.
The Hepburn Act was in form an amendment of the act of 1887;
but it marked a wholly new departure. It raised the number of mem-
bers of the Interstate Commerce Commission from five to seven,
lengthened the term of members from five to seven years, and brought
up their salary from $7,500 to $10,000. It extended the interstate
commerce laws and the jurisdiction of the Commission, to interstate
pipe lines, express companies, sleeping-car companies, and all in-
cidental services at terminals. It authorized the Commission to fix
the form of accounts and records used by the carriers, and to require
all accounts to be submitted for inspection. It restored the penalty
of imprisonment for failure to observe published tariffs, and pre-
scribed a fine of three times the amount of the rebate for shippers
or other parties knowingly accepting or profiting by unlawful favors.
A new and drastic “commodity clause,” intended to divorce trans-
portation from other business, forbade interstate or foreign trans-
portation, after May 1, 1908, of any commodity (other than timber)
produced or mined by the carrier, except articles required for the
carrier’s own use.
Of largest importance was the section giving the Commission its
first express grant of rate-making power. The grant stopped short
of the desires of the radicals. It did not include authority to make
interstate rates generally; but it authorized the Commission, on
complaint and after a hearing, to determine and prescribe just and
reasonable maximum rates, regulations, and practices. Carriers
were given the right to bring suit in any circuit court to annul such
actions, with appeal to the Supreme Court.
The gains for regulation were: broader jurisdiction, separation of
transportation from other business, suppression of passes, uniformity
and publicity of accounts, and the express grant of administrative
rate-making power. Concessions to the railroads included broad and
indefinite court review and the restriction of rate-making to maximum
rates. The railroads came off better than they had hoped. The
Commission, moreover, took up its added duties in a spirit of modera-
tion. Many early decisions were in the carriers’ favor, and for a few
years the operators seemed to have accepted the situation with good
grace.
No. 88] Railroad Regulation 371
It was to be expected that the new legislation would be reviewed
by the courts. The “commodities” and rebating clauses were tested
speedily. September 10, 1908, the Circuit Court of Appeals at Phila-
delphia rendered a decision in the Delaware and Hudson Case pro-
nouncing the commodities clause unconstitutional. The case was
appealed, and on May 3, 1909, the Supreme Court reversed the judg-
ment, but construed the prohibition laid upon carriers not to be
applicable to commodities manufactured, mined, or owned by corpo-
rations in which the carriers were stockholders. This emasculated the
clause; practically all of the anthracite coal roads were exempted, al-
though it was mainly to reach them that the clause had been adopted.
On the other hand, in reaffirming, in the same year, a verdict imposing
a fine on the New York Central Railroad for giving rebates to the
American Sugar Refining Company, the Supreme Court unanimously
pronounced the anti-rebating features of the law constitutional... .
Meanwhile, railroad regulation had been taken up earnestly in the
states. At best, the jurisdiction of the national government was
limited; and the country was in no mood to be satisfied with the
remedy of abuses in commerce at great distances. The thing that
troubled the mass of shippers and consumers was discriminations,
excessive rates, and inadequate service in local traffic. A renewed
appeal to state authority was stimulated by the Hepburn law; and
in the early months of 1907, when the legislatures of thirty-nine
states were in session, legislation was passed touching every phase
of railroad organization and management. The movement was
reminiscent of the grangerism of 1870-1877. But whereas the granger
laws appeared in only a few western states, the present legislation was
nation-wide. In all, more than three hundred railroad measures were
enacted—one hundred and seventy-seven in ten states alone. .
In 1908 the railroads, suffering from the financial crisis of 1907 as
well as from ill-advised regulation, were hard pressed; twenty-four
lines, aggregating eight thousand miles, were forced into the hands of
receivers, while others were saved only by rigid economy. Few legis-
latures were in session during the year, and little railroad legislation
was enacted. By 1909 the clamor had somewhat subsided; the forty-
one legislatures in session passed a total of six hundred and sixty-four
railroad laws; but these measures were less harsh than those of 1907.
Thereafter railroad legislation by the states seldom produced serious
372 Monopolies and Trusts [1903-1914
controversies. The principle of regulation was incontrovertibly
established; and difficulties over rate-making were largely avoided
by assigning that important function to a body of experts forming a
state railroad commission, or, in lieu of such an agency, to the public
utilities or corporations commission. In 1917 but two states were
without a commission exercising powers of this kind.
Railroad regulation was little discussed in the national campaign
of 1908. But President Taft felt that public sentiment demanded
further action; besides, he was under pledge to follow up the policies
of his predecessor. In its annual report for 1908 the Interstate Com-
merce Commission asked for fresh grants of power, including authority
to make physical valuations, to bring proceedings without complaint,
and to control issues of railway stocks and bonds. January 7, 1910,
the President laid before Congress the Administration’s program, in a
tentative bill drawn by Attorney-General Wickersham.
The measure was introduced in the Senate by Stephen B. Elkins,
chairman of the Committee on Interstate Commerce, and in the
House by James R. Mann, chairman of the Committee on Interstate
and Foreign Commerce. It failed to arouse either the public or the
railroads, but it was debated at length in both houses and amended out
of all semblance to its original form. May 10, the House passed it
by a vote of 201 to 126, and on June 3 the Senate adopted it, in some-
what different form, by a vote of 50 to 12. A conference committee
worked out a basis of agreement, and the measure became law June 18.
While under consideration in Congress the Hepburn Act was much
weakened by amendment. The Mann-Elkins Act, on the other hand,
was strengthened; so that, although a product of compromise, it
turned out to be a very important piece of legislation. Its provisions
were directed mainly to two ends: expediting appeals from the Inter-
state Commerce Commission, and increasing the Commission’s
powers. The congestion and delay in appeal proceedings called for
remedy. At the President’s suggestion, the law provided a new tri-
bunal, composed of five circuit judges selected by the Chief Justice,
and known as the Commerce Court. This court was to sit contin-
uously at Washington for the purpose of hearing appeals from the
rules and acts of the Commission. Appeals from its judgments might
be carried to the Supreme Court, with precedence over all save criminal
caseson |
No. 88] Railroad Regulation 373
Under the terms of the new law the Commerce Court was organized
in December, 1910, with Martin A. Knapp, former chairman of the
Interstate Commerce Commission, as presiding judge. The tribunal
never gained popular confidence, and in 1912 Congress in effect
abolished it by cutting off its appropriation. .
Judicial decisions after the passage of the Hepburn Act tended to
exalt the regulative power of the federal government and of its agent,
the Interstate Commerce Commission. In the Minnesota Rate Cases,
decided June 9, 1913, the Supreme Court took new ground in asserting
that state regulation of intrastate rates was exclusive only until Con-
gress acted, and that Congress might regulate such rates as against
state control whenever it wished, for the reason that intrastate rates
indirectly determined interstate rates. In the Texas-Shreveport
Case, decided June 8, 1914, the court held not only that the federal
government could regulate intrastate rates, but that the Interstate
Commerce Commission already had the necessary authority. The
Minnesota cases were primarily a test of the rate-making powers of
the states; and the court ruled that the states had full power to fix
rates on railroad traffic within their borders, except where the use of
such power would interfere directly with the regulation of commerce
beyond their borders, or amount to confiscation. This was a disap-
pointment to the railroads, which within ten years had developed a
preference for federal, as against state, rate-making control; yet there
was promise of relief in the new reaches of the federal authority.
Frederic Austin Ogg, National Progress [American Nation, XXVII] (New York,
Harper, 1918), 45-56 passim.
RAR evel
ADMINISTRATIVE METHODS
AND EXPEDIENTS
CHAPTER XVII — PARTY AND POLITICAL
ORGANIZATION
89. The Party Campaign Committee (1904)
BY ALBERT HALSTEAD
Halstead has been a newspaper correspondent and editor, has held various posts
in the United States Consular Service, and is at present Consul General at Mon-
treal. An essential part of the modern political organization, the party campaign
committee is a creation of circumstances rather than of the intent of the founders
of our government. Cortelyou was rewarded by appointment to Roosevelt’s Cab-.
inet as Secretary of the newly formed Department of Commerce and Labor; see No.
28 above.—For the various campaigns, see American Year Book for appropriate
years, and volumes of memoirs and biography, such as A. W. Dunn, From Harrison
to Harding; H. H. Kohlsaat, From McKinley to Harding; Theodore Roosevelt,
Autobiography; Joseph Bucklin Bishop, Notes and Anecdotes; Champ Clark, My
Quarter Century; Robert M. LaFollette, Personal Narrative.
T has been customary for the Republican nominee for President
to select his own campaign manager, the national committee
electing his choice to its chairmanship. When his nomination was
assured, President Roosevelt sought a manager. Senator Marcus A.
Hanna, who had outlived the calumnies that characterized the policy
of the opposition in his two successful campaigns to elect William
McKinley, was the President’s original choice. He and the Ohio
Senator discussed that matter before the latter’s last illness. The
President urged Mr. Hanna to accept, but he was unwilling, as he
knew his impaired physical resources were unequal to the task. But
had he lived, though he could not have commanded the Republican
374
No. 89] The Party Campaign Committee B75
forces in action, M. A. Hanna would have been the chief adviser of
his successor to the national chairmanship.
Theodore Roosevelt was in no hurry to decide upon the man to
whom he would intrust his political fortunes. He consulted with
party leaders and patiently considered the merits of the several men
mentioned. For various reasons, the name of every one whose politi-
cal experience made him seem available was dismissed. But, finally,
as if by inspiration, George B. Cortelyou was suggested. It was a ray
of light on a vexatious problem. The President knew Cortelyou
thoroughly, knew what he had been to Cleveland, and especially to
McKinley. He had learned to value at their real worth his qualities
and his capacity,—first, through the intimate association of President
with secretary, and then as a cabinet officer. He knew Cortelyou
had met every emergency and equalled every responsibility. Here
was a man with the genius of organization, trained by hard experience,
acquainted with every politician of prominence, in touch with political
conditions in every section, who had independence and moral courage.
With all the qualities required of a national chairman, except that of
experience in actual political management, he was not hampered by
narrow views, but was resourceful, energetic, and wholly trust-
worthy.
Having seen Mr. Cortelyou tried in all conditions, knowing his
faithfulness and appreciating in full measure his ability, the President
chose him to conduct the campaign upon which hangs his own political
future, and to a large degree the destiny of the nation. A great factor
was the knowledge that Mr. Cortelyou would be chairman in reality,
and not a figurehead to follow Presidential dictation, or to be con-
trolled by any other influence. .
Four months is the extreme limit of a Presidential campaign. The
first ten weeks must be devoted to organization and preparation
alone, for no matter how important the issues, the people will not take
keen interest during the heated term. The organization of the two
parties has been completed. Mr. Cortelyou, in whose hands are the
reins of control, is responsible for the conduct of the Republican fight.
Consult he does, as any general, with his lieutenants, but his is the
deciding voice as much as is that of the President in his cabinet. Now
comes the strenuous seven or eight weeks of active campaigning.
Each party has two headquarters, one in the East and the other in
370 Party and Political Organization [z904
the West, that the managers may be in closer touch with the several
battle-grounds. While the Republicans will not concede that any of
the States that were carried by McKinley in 1900 are doubtful, they
must accept the battle where the enemy gives it, and concentrate
their energies on the States which the Democrats attack. In the East,
the Democrats are attempting to capture New York, Connecticut,
New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and West Virginia. To fight for
these, though most of them are not regarded as doubtful, is the duty
of the Eastern headquarters, located in New York City. In the West,
Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Colorado, Idaho, Montana,
and Utah are receiving the most. Democratic attention. For the
conduct of the campaign in these States the Western headquarters
at Chicago is held responsible. Each headquarters is in Chairman
Cortelyou’s direct control. He will divide his time between the two
as the exigencies of the situation require, but will at all times be in
intimate touch with both.
The actual conduct of the campaign, under Chairman Cortelyou’s
direction, is in charge of the executive committee, appointed by him.
Assigned to the Eastern headquarters are Charles F. Brooker, of
Connecticut; Senator Nathan B. Scott, of West Virginia; Gov. Frank-
lin Murphy, of New Jersey; and William L. Ward, of New York.
Each is a national committeeman. Each comes from a State in which
the opposition will make the most desperate fight., In the States they
represent the issue will be determined. Mr. Brooker is a manufac-
turer, who stands high in his State, and has had previous experience
in national politics. Senator Scott was one of Senator Hanna’s right
hand men in his two campaigns and one of his devoted friends. Gov-
ernor Murphy is a manufacturer and a trained manager, to whom the
Republicanism of New Jersey is largely due. William L. Ward is a
political expert, and fully conversant with the New York situation.
On duty at the Western headquarters are Harry S. New, of Indiana;
Frank O. Lowden, of Illinois; R. B. Schneider, of Nebraska; and
David W. Mulvane, of Kansas. Each of these, except Mr. Schneider,
is a national committeeman. Mr. New knows Indiana thoroughly,
and is a trained manager. Colonel Lowden, also an expert in politics,
is in close touch with Illinois, and is a State leader. Mr. Schneider
understands Nebraska and the currents that run in the West. Mr.
Mulvane, in addition to his knowledge of the Kansas situation, is
No. 89] The Party Campaign Committee a7
fully conversant with that in Colorado and the other inter-mountain
States.
At the Western headquarters, Elmer Dover, of Ohio, secretary of
the national committee, is stationed. In Mr. Cortelyou’s absence,
he is in command. Though young, he has had the benefit of training
under the late Senator Hanna, whose private secretary he was. He
and Senator Scott represent the old Hanna régime. The responsibil-
ities imposed on Mr. Dover are because of his proved and exceptional
fitness. At the Eastern headquarters is Louis A. Coolidge, of Massa-
chusetts, director of literary and press work, who has charge of the
headquarters when Mr. Cortelyou is in the West. He has proved
his executive talent in places of responsibility, and his experience as a
Washington newspaper correspondent, with his wide acquaintance
with public men and understanding of political conditions, prepared
him particularly for his new activity. More than anyone, except Mr.
Cortelyou himself, is he the President’s representative. Senator Scott
is head of the speakers’ bureau for the East, the same work he per-
formed under Chairman M. Hanna, and Representative James A.
Tawney, of Minnesota, is chief of the similar bureau in the West.
Here is evidence of that codperation between the national and Con-
gressional committees that promises such good results, for Mr.
Tawney is also in charge of speakers for the Congressional com-
mittee.
No campaign can be run without money. It is needed to meet
the many heavy expenses that are not only wholly legitimate, but
absolutely necessary. Rent, printing, postage, stationery, traveling,
canvassing, clerical hire, literature,—these are some of the items of
expense. While some money comes unasked,—as for example, Mrs.
Hanna’s large contribution,—most of the necessary funds must be
solicited. That means a most important committee,—that on finance.
The members of this committee cannot be made known, as that would
embarrass and hamper their activities. It must be understood that
in the solicitation of money there are no promises and no pledges to
corporations or others. It is popularly supposed that there is great
carelessness in the expenditure of money by a national committee.
That may be so, on occasions, but in the present campaign the Re-
publicans have a most careful system of vouchers and auditing, which
prevents the waste or misuse of its funds. Each expenditure is scru-
378 Party and Political Organization [1904
tinized as carefully as if the committee were conducting a great busi-
ness house, and is as strictly accounted for.
In addition to the sources of information at Chairman Cortelyou’s
disposal, he has a large advisory committee, composed of skilled
politicians from all sections. They never meet as a body, but com-
municate with the chairman by letter or in person, telling him of the
progress of the fight in their several States. The value of this com-
mittee is immeasurable. It was selected with great care. . .
A campaign is organized on the plan of an army. Discipline is
imperative. The conduct of each tactical unit affects the result as
much as it does the fate of an army in battle. Chairman Cortelyou
deals directly with the several State organizations, depending upon
them for the execution of his plans. With them there is the most
harmonious relation. As he relies on the State committees, so they
act through their several city and county committees. He is informed
of conditions in every State, and is in receipt of constant reports from
all contested points. Where disaffection exists, there particular
efforts are made to overcome it. Literature to enlighten voters and
to destroy misconceptions is sent thither in great quantities, and
speakers are dispatched to awaken the apathetic and arouse enthu-
siasm. As the campaign progresses new methods are developed to
meet new situations. Constant vigilance is the order. While there
is no hope of the Republicans carrying any Southern State, any more
than the Democrats can expect to win in rock-ribbed Republican
States in the North, this year Republican Congressional candidates
will contest every Southern district. This will occupy Southern
leaders more than usual, and tend to keep them from invading the
North. Representative Babcock, of Wisconsin, who has won five
consecutive campaigns for the House, is in charge of the Congres-
sional canvass. He has the prestige of success and of experience.
Education of voters, next to organization, is most important. This
is chiefly the duty of the literary bureau. It distributes documents
and furnishes material, including editorial and news matter, for the
country press. Much of this is distributed through the associations
that provide “plate matter” to the small newspapers that cannot
set up their general news. It also informs newspaper correspondents,
stationed at headquarters, of each day’s development. The theory
that governs its work is that the average voter will be impressed more
No. 89] The Party Campaign Committee 379
by brief, striking statements of fact that explain Republican policies,
show the benefits that have followed their enforcement, and puncture
Democratic pretensions. In this it appeals especially to the busy
city voter. The Congressional committee also distributes documents,
chiefly Republican Congressional speeches and public reports, under
Congressional franks. Before the campaign is ended many millions
of these, weighing tons, will have been sent out from its distributing
office in Washington. The Congressional literature appeals especially
to the country voter. The literary bureau does not trench upon the
distributing work of the Congressional committee. It seeks to make
its news service attractive, to entertain while it educates. Statistics
that talk, cartoons, and striking posters are some of its best methods.
The speakers’ bureaus provide ‘‘spellbinders”’ to gladden the hearts
of cheering multitudes and awaken them to the pitch of enthusiasm
that brings them to the polls. Probably more than five hundred
speakers will be on the hustings under the direction of the national
committee in addition to the thousands that State and local commit-
tees will dispatch into the political mission fields. A campaign book
has been issued, which is an admirable history of Republican executive
and legislative accomplishments in the eight years of its full control
of the Government. ...
Each member of the executive committee has his own department,
and is responsible to Chairman Cortelyou. Among their duties are
the winning of first voters, club organization, naturalization and the
prevention of naturalization frauds, registration, detection of tricks
and fraud, correction of misrepresentation, and a thousand others.
Albert Halstead, Chairman Cortelyou and the Republican Campaign, in Review
uf Reviews (New York, 1904), XXX, 294-298 passim.
380 ‘Party and Political Organization [1910
go. Political Finances (1910)
BY PROFESSOR CHARLES A. BEARD
Beard has served as Professor of Politics at Columbia University, and has written
several important works in the fields of history and government. The methods of
collecting funds to finance political campaigns have sometimes been so successful
that the large sums expended by candidates for office have given rise to national
scandals. For specific instances of excessive expenditure, see periodical accounts of
the Senate investigations of the cases of Newberry of Michigan (1921-1922) and
Vare of Pennsylvania (1928-1929).
T is evident that parties cannot exist without organization and that
organizations of permanent workers cannot exist without funds,
and that the funds must be derived from some place—either from loyal
party supporters or from private persons and organizations expecting
to derive monetary advantages from the victory of the organization
to which they contribute. It becomes necessary, therefore, to examine
the sources from which a party organization must expect to derive
its sustaining funds.
1. There are, in the first place, the public offices which are to be
looked forward to as the legitimate reward of party services. The
adoption of the principles of civil service reform has reduced to some
extent the relative number of offices to be filled by partisan workers,
but nevertheless there remains an enormous number of federal, state,
and local offices to be distributed. It is estimated that the political
appointments within the gift of the President have an annual value
of more than $12,000,000. The multiplication of the functions of
state government tends to place an ever larger appointing power in
the hands of the governor and the state senate or some other central
authority. Every state legislature has within its gift appointments
to legislative offices and positions to employ for partisan purposes,
usually free from civil service control. For example, there are ser-
geants-at-arms and assistant sergeants-at-arms, principal doorkeepers,
first and second assistant doorkeepers, journal clerks, executive-
clerks, index clerks, revision clerks, librarians, messengers, post-
masters, janitors, stenographers, and messengers to the various
committees and assistants first and second, too numerous to mention
—the legislature of New York costs the state for its mere running
No. 90] Political Finances 381
expenses alone more than $800,000 a year. Then there are the city
offices, high and low, steadily multiplying in number and, in spite
of the civil service restrictions, to a large extent within the gift of the
political party that wins at the polls. Finally there are the election
officers, a vast army of inspectors, ballot clerks, and poll clerks for
the primary and regular elections, who derive anywhere from $10 to
$50 a year for their services. New York City spends annually more
than $400,000 in paying the officials who preside at primaries and
elections.
2, In the next place there are the levies on the candidates, Gen-
erally speaking, no one can hope to be elected to office to-day without
being nominated by one of the political parties. The party organiza-
tion wages the campaign which carries the candidate into office, and
what is more natural and just than the demand that the candidate
shall help to pay the legitimate expenses of the campaign? It is a
regular practice, therefore, for party organizations, state and local,
to levy tribute from candidates for nominations as well as from nom-
inees to office—generally in proportion to the value of the office they
seek. Mr. Wheeler Peckham testified before the Mazet Commission
in 1899 as follows: “It is generally assumed that a candidate for a
judicial position (New York City) pays somewhere or other, either
for nomination or election, or assessment in some way, quite a large
sum. Judges have spoken to me about assessment and deprecated
the existence of it very strongly. I suppose the amount paid would
range between $10,000 and $25,000. . . . I assume that referees are
to a great degree appointed with reference to the judge’s recognition
of the political party or political organization that nominated or elected
him, and to which he owed his nomination. Judges of the courts
here recognize their obligation to the political organization which
elected them, and they have a desire, and it is carried to a greater or
less extent in the distribution of the patronage that belongs to them,
to recognize that fact.” There are in addition levies on office-holders,
after election, even in spite of the laws forbidding this practice. Office-
holders do not always wait to be pressed by the party in this matter.
It is not expedient to wait.
3. The construction of parks, school buildings, highways, and other
public works is a fruitful source of revenue to the party organization
which controls the letting of contracts. High bids may be accepted
382 Party and Political Organization [1910
on the condition that the surplus shall go to the party war chest or
to party leaders. The capitol building and grounds at Albany cost
the state nearly $25,000,000, and the plunder of the public treasury
in the construction of the capitol at Harrisburg is a matter of recent
history.
4. Undoubtedly the most fruitful source of revenue for party
organizations within recent years has been contributions from cor-
porations (now frequently forbidden by law). Railway, insurance,
banking, gas, electric, street railway, telegraph, express, telephone,
and other public service corporations must receive many privileges
from cities and states. They must secure franchises in the first place,
and some must have permits to tear up streets and highways, and
extend their operations in various forms. To secure special favors,
for which they ought to pay large sums to the public, corporations
too often find it cheaper and easier to contribute handsomely to party
organizations and to have the organization “control” the proper
officials. Very often, also, party leaders compel corporations to pay
heavily for securing permits to which they are legitimately entitled.
and in such instances corporations usually find it easier to pay than
to go to law or argue... .
5. The most despicable source of party revenue is that derived
zrom the protection of saloons, gambling, and vice in every form. The
extent to which this opportunity is exploited is, of course, difficult
to determine; but indisputable evidence from cities as far apart as
San Francisco and New York illustrates only too painfully the way
in which party war chests are sometimes augmented by stained money
drawn from criminal elements to which police immunity is afforded.
Although the exact amount of money collected by various political
organizations from time to time is difficult to ascertain, the total
levied in any year of a general election undoubtedly reaches a fabulous
sum, and this money is applied largely to the conduct of campaigns,
although some portions of it frequently find their way into the private
exchequers of party leaders. It is spent for printing, advertising,
hiring halls, securing speakers, and paying the rank and file of party
workers. Undoubtedly large sums find their way through some of
the election district captains to venal voters. The extent of the
purchasable vote is, of course, impossible to state; but a careful
study of Rhode Island made some years ago placed it between ten
No. 91] Party Organization in State and County 383
and twenty-five per cent of the total number. Every worker in prac-
tical politics, although he may not acknowledge it, probably knows
that votes are bought, sometimes grossly by outright purchase at a
fixed price, and at other times in more subtle ways, as for example,
by paying railway fares and expenses for electors going home to vote,
paying countrymen to come out to vote, and employing party workers
with the tacit understanding that they have little or nothing to
dorian:
The last, but by no means the least, powerful element in organized
politics is the management of the voters. Party leaders and workers
assist the poor voters by a thousand charitable acts. They give
outings, picnics, clam-bakes, and celebrations for them; they help
the unemployed to get work with private corporations or in govern-
mental departments; they pay the rent of sick and unfortunate men
about to be dispossessed; they appear in court for those in trouble,
and often a word to the magistrate saves the voter from the workhouse
or even worse; they remember the children at Christmas; and, in
short, they are the ever watchful charity agents for their respective
neighborhoods. A kind word and a little money in time of pressing
need often will go further than an eloquent tract on civic virtue. Thus
politics as it works through party organization is a serious and desper-
ately determined business activity; it works night and day; it is
patient; it gets what it can; it never relents.
Charles A. Beard, American Government and Politics (New York, Macmillan,
1910), 667-672 passim.
———»~>————
gt. Party Organization in State and County (1915)
BY PROFESSOR JAMES T. YOUNG (1923)
Young is Professor of Public Administration at the University of Pennsylvania.
HE local machinery of a party is organized on its national
model. In each commonwealth there is a State committee, a
large body which seldom meets, most of its work being performed by
the chairman. The State leader, who is usually one of the Senators,
controls this committee completely. He consults with its members
384 Party and Political Organization [r915
and with the local leaders from each county and congressional dis-
trict, but all of the committee’s resolutions, decisions, and other acts
are approved by the leader before being presented to the committee
itself. Nevertheless the committee may be important in time of
emergency or crisis or factional warfare for control of the party or-
ganization. This is clear from a glance at its chief powers, which are:
(a) to draft the platform of the party in the State, (b) to fill vacancies
which may occur among the party candidates shortly before election,
(c) to conduct correspondence with the various local, county, city,
and congressional district committees and with the national com-
mittee.
This latter authority is much more important than it seems—it
gives the State committee power to determine which is the officially
recognized party head in any local district. The local office-holders
and those who want office are continually bickering for control of
the local party organization. In a dispute between two rival factions
the State committee makes an authoritative decision and by this
means is often able to put down an insurrection in the party. (d) It
is in the State committee, too, that the slate of delegates at large to
the national presidential convention is usually prepared, and advice
given to the leaders in congressional districts as to the choice of their
delegates to the convention. The State committee is chosen either
by the county committees—one member from each county or by
direct primaries, according to the State law. These primaries also
nominate candidates for State and local offices but where conventions
exist the latter make the choice. (e) One of the less important func-
tions of the State committee about which, however, much enthusiasm
is shown, is the indorsement of the national platform in presidential
and congressional elections. This is done by a series of high-sounding
resolutions which are intended for “domestic consumption” among
the voters of the State. (f) The collection and distribution of funds
for the State campaigns. Many State laws now provide for the pub-
lication of receipts and their sources, and of expenses for all purposes
connected with nominations and election campaigns.
Whether conventions or direct primaries are used, there are always
certain important committees for control of which the rival factions
struggle: (a) the city or county committee, (b) the ward committee,
and (c) the district committee.
No. 91] Party Organization in State and County 3385
The city—or in the rural sections the county—committee, is a body
of 40 or 50 men chosen by the ward committees or elected by the
voters at the primary. Its powers correspond to those of the State
committee, and it uses to the full its prerogative of recognizing and
supporting local division committeemen and leaders and thereby
determining who shall have the official party control in each locality.
It is the city committee which ‘“steam-rollers” all dangerous inde-
pendent leaders within the party fold. Its control of the funds also
is unquestioned and despite laws requiring public statements of re-
ceipts and expenses most of the city committees today are still irre-
sponsible; they are often accused of misappropriating a part of the
funds which pass through their hands.
The ward committee or, in the rural sections, the township com-
mittee, is chosen directly by the party members at the primary and
is a miniature city committee. Under it come various district com-
mittees of which there are often 30 or 40 in a city ward, according to
the density of the population. These are also chosen by the voters
and it is to these latter that the real work of getting out the vote is
delegated. Each district chairman has a certain sum of money al-
lotted to him by the county committee; he also directs the party
workers under his control. The central county or city committee is
kept well informed of the conditions in every subdivision at all times.
The personal interest and affairs of each voter or the means which
may be used to influence him must all be familiar to the local workers
in the party organization. .. .
We must understand clearly that the work of the party is after all
personal in its nature. The voter must be appealed to by a personal
talk and through direct influence rather than by circulars or cam-
paign letters. The party is therefore built upon the division worker
as its foundation stone. If he is active and intelligent, and if he keeps
in friendly touch with the voters frequently from one election to
another, the party does well in his divisions. The committee chair-
men recognizing this, hold frequent meetings with the workers to keep
up a spirit of watchfulness and devotion. .. .
There is a popular impression that the party takes care of its workers
by giving them government positions, but this is only partly true.
The advance of the civil service movement has limited the scope of
party resources in this respect and the leaders find it necessary to cast
380 Party and Political Organization [1915
about for outside positions for their subordinates. There is a rich
field of opportunity in the many corporations which have city con-
tracts or franchises or which manage public utility businesses such as
lighting, street railways, and the like. . . . The men so placed have
not the precarious tenure that they would have in a purely political
job and it is the practice of many corporations and business con-
cerns to deal with the leaders of both parties, following the principle of
“safety first.”
Then, too, when a party worker falls upon hard times he may go to
his local leader or feudal superior and secure a loan, a new position,
or a job for some member of his family. When trapped in the meshes
of the law a word in season spoken to the committing magistrate by
the chief will secure his discharge and later his immunity from further
prosecution. This beneficent protective influence follows him even
to prison, if he is so unfortunate as to be convicted; large numbers of
politically befriended criminals are allowed greater privileges while in
jail and often escape the full service of their terms. Nor does the
party worker’s special privilege stop here. When he is on the “out,”
that is, when the opposite party is in power, he will nevertheless be
treated with greater consideration than an ordinary citizen. It is an
undoubted fact that a minority party worker going into the city hall
or county offices can secure favors from his political rivals which are
not granted to others. Every successful leader carries on his roll of
che faithful, the names of those who have fulfilled instructions. Though
the popular indignation of the moment may condemn them, the
policeman who commits an illegal act in the course of his party “ du-
ties,” the ballot-box stuffer whose zeal for the party’s success leads
him to be caught, the minor henchman who, taking his instructions
too literally, intimidates the voters of a rival faction—all these men
may safely reckon on the leader’s utmost protection and what is more
important, a later reward in the shape of some suitable office when
the leader returns to power. The public wrath is fleeting, the “or-
ganization’s”’ care of its own is tireless.
But let it not be supposed that this faithful care and intense loyalty
are personal in their nature; far from it. They represent the carefully
thought-out policy of an intelligent self-interest. Once the leader has
permanently lost his power all his subordinates must perforce flock
to the new successor and tender their services like vassals to a new
No. 92] Voting for President 387
feudal chief. The boss is absolute while he is boss but let him lose
his ability to furnish jobs and funds and he will at once realize the
truth of the aphorism that “there is nothing so dead as a dead politi-
cian.”
James T. Young, The New American Government and Its Work (New York,
Macmillan, 1923), 559-564 passim.
—_+—_—_.
92. Voting for President (1916)
FROM THE NEW REPUBLIC
This editorial from a liberal weekly outlines the broad powers of the head of the
United States government—powers which lend importance to the business of ballot-
ing for President. For some examples of the exercise of presidential power, see Nus.
23-26 on Roosevelt and Nos. 129-132 on Wilson.
NCE every four years the American people seize the opportunity
afforded by the presidential campaign to indulge in a prolonged
feverish and enervating debauch. The outbreak stands alone in their
political life. Ordinarily they waste very little excitement or senti-
ment on politics. They have to vote so frequently, for so many
insignificant offices and on so many futile occasions that voting has
become cheap. It has become an operation hardly more thrilling or
perturbing than that of smoking a cigar. But in this exceptional
instance the infusion of water into the voting privilege has not availed
to diminish its value. There has been conferred upon the American
voter the opportunity of casting one vote of transcendent importance.
The Presidency has been increasing in size until it is now probably
the most powerful political office established by any modern system of
government. In seizing the occasion offered by a presidential cam-
paign to break into an orgy of political excitement American voters
are only allowing their feelings to rise and effervesce in sympathetic
commotion with the tremendous hazards, temptations and doubts
of casting a vote for a presidential candidate.
Although our American constitutions were framed largely for the
purpose of preventing the concentration of too much power in the
hands of one man or one body of men, all the precautions adopted by
the fathers have not sufficed to prevent what they most feared from
388 Party and Political Organization [1916
taking place. An American President who is large enough to cope
with the opportunities of his office can do more individually to mould
the political behavior of his fellow countrymen and the destinies of
his country than can the Russian Czar or the German Kaiser. He is,
to be sure, circumscribed by a comprehensive group of constitutional
restrictions from which they are free, but the limitations upon his.
authority are formal and its prerogatives are substantial. During
his briefer term of office he can drink deeper than they of the actual
sources of political power. An absolute monarch must always be to
a very considerable extent the accomplice of a permanent bureau-
cratic machine and the mouthpiece of an authoritative national
tradition. A Kaiser is a figurehead for kaiserism. But the power of
an American President is to a much larger extent personal. His cabi-
net is composed of clerks. Even if a permanent, independent and
self-willed bureaucracy is coming, it has yet to be organized. The
country is governed less by authoritative traditions than by a fluid
and immediate public opinion, and all conditions are conspiring to
confer on the President prodigious influence on the formation of public
opinion. The American people are more than ever a newspaper
democracy. The President is obliged to be a newspaper hero. What-
ever he does or says is unexceptionable and incomparable news. The
vague and changing national tradition permits him to mould popular
ideas and guide popular impulses. He can use as an instrument the
most insidious and pervasive vehicle of publicity which ever pervaded
the highways of a national mind. His fellow countrymen in so far
as they cannot be converted into accepting his leadership can be
hypnotized into failing to oppose it.
The President’s opportunity of informing and dominating American
political life has been much enhanced by recent changes in the nature
and relative importance of American foreign policy. In this region
his legal authority is unusually extensive. The nation’s official dip-
lomatic agents are responsible to him. His position as commander-
in-chief of the army and the navy has in the past been of minor im-
portance except during war; but when the army consists of 500,000
trained soldiers and the navy is large enough to upset the balance of
international maritime power, those prerogatives begin to wear a royal
aspect. While he cannot declare war or make peace, the formulation
of the foreign policy which may inevitably involve the country in
No. 92] Voting for President 389
war is being confided very largely to him. Until recently foreign
policy was the phase of American politics about which there was
least controversy. It was dictated by specific and authoritative
instead of by a fluid and uncertain condition. But now that American
isolation has passed and the situation of the United States demands
rather a positive and a dangerous than a negative and safe policy, a
really colossal responsibility has been imposed on the man who hap-
pens to be President. He alone has complete access to the sources of
knowledge upon which action must be conditioned. He alone has the
authority to act, when action is necessary. He alone can override
congressional opposition and force public opinion to accept his de-
cisions. Mr. Wilson’s success in his fight with Congress over armed
merchantmen is a significant demonstration of the extraordinary
power which has been lodged in the President as a result of the novel
problems and crises of American foreign affairs. In its relation with
other countries the President incontestably and almost exclusively
speaks and acts for the whole nation.
The transformation of the American President into a potentate
has been the occasion of many misgivings and apprehensions. It
is urged that the American people are putting too many of their
political eggs in one basket. They are erecting their Chief Magistrate
into a plausible imitation of a dictator. They are allowing their
presidential election to assume certain characteristics of a plebiscite,
which confers on the successful candidate a general license to govern
the country. The system, it is said, of presidential government will
not work. No one can measure up to the size of a President’s job.
He cannot at the same time be sufficiently capable as a leader, an
administrator, a negotiator, a law-giver, and a publicity agent. He
would not have the time even if he had the ability. Neither can a
voter cast a discriminating vote for an office which requires of its
incumbent the performance of such varied and exacting tasks. He
would be turning the government largely over to one man; and in
so doing he could only be gambling upon the chance of getting the
kind of government in which he believed. His support could amount
to nothing but an expression of general confidence.
There is much force in these misgivings and apprehensions. The
President is being asked to do more than one man or many men can
do properly, and the Presidency is in danger of being transformed
390 Party and Political Organization [1916
into an overloaded and unmanageable political office—one which
might become an offense in the hands of a weak man. But talk about
dictatorships and plebiscites is an exaggeration. The American na-
tion has the qualities as well as the defects of a newspaper democracy.
Its Presidency is an excessively exacting office, only because it has
become the indispensable mouthpiece of national public opinion.
Certain essential aspects of his power are as much dependent on
popular confidence as is the power of the British Cabinet dependent
on the confidence of the House of Commons. Without the support
derived from public opinion and renewed, if not from day to day,
at least from month to month, his ability to initiate and to govern
would be pared down within narrow limits. Even his express con-
stitutional prerogatives would be sterilized by the want of public
support. A dangerous or incompetent but unpopular President
could do many kinds of damage; but he could not undermine American
institutions. The Presidency obtained its recent accessions of power
only in response to a genuine need of national leadership. Its trans-
formation does not indicate that the American democracy is no longer
capable of self-government, and it does not call for condemnation,
opposition and reaction. What it does call for is analysis, understand-
ing and an improved organization.
The real difficulties and dangers of the situation do not arise from
the transformation of the Presidency into a great representative
institution. They arise from the failure to transform the other polit-
ical institutions, associated with the Presidency, into more serviceable
associates of that high office and more effective checks upon the
possible abuses of its power. A chief executive who is responsible
for formulating and initiating the foreign and domestic policy of a
government needs to be surrounded by advisers wko are something
better than clerks and who are themselves independently representa-
tive of certain phases of organized opinion. The cabinet members
obtain the quality of being independently representative only by
sitting in the legislative body and by securing some independence of
position as a consequence of their influence on Congress. But the
really formidable difficulty is Congress itself and the system of local
partisan organization which Congress chiefly represents. The Presi-
dent, no matter how strong he is in popular confidence, is obliged to
govern by means of a party and by means of a majority in Congress.
No. 93] ‘he National Conventions 391
Yet these party organizations and congressional majorities are always
seeking to nullify one essential phase of a successful system of presi-
dential government. They always insist on retaining ultimate direc-
tion of the administration of the national business and the national
laws. They will yield anything to a President except their control
over finance and over the appointment of upper administrative
officials. Thus the President can neither dispense with the congres-
sional party machine nor depend on it for loyal service and independent
counsel. It hampers him grievously in the practical work of adminis-
tration which should be lodged entirely in the hands of the executive.
But it does not supply an effective organ of independent or disinter-
ested criticism and advice. Presidents, no matter how able and well
meaning they are, will certainly fail to live up to the needs of the
office unless they are supplied with really expert assistance and really
independent counsel. And they will never get it until some President
is willing to sacrifice his legislative program and his party popularity
to the supremely important work of emancipating presidential
government from the handicap of disloyal and defective instruments,
and restoring to congressional government its proper function of
independent review, criticism and discussion.
New Republic, April 5, 1916.
auton abeece
93. The National Conventions (1924)
BY PROFESSOR WILLIAM B. MUNRO
Munro is Professor of History and Government in Harvard, and an authority
in his field. The conventions of 1924 and 1928 were broadcast to the nation at
large by radio, as were also many of the campaign speeches of the candidates and
cheir partisans.
HE National Conventions of the two major narties are always
held during the month of June. The leaders of each party are
free to fix their own dates, but by usage the Republicans always hold
their convention first. Usage has also dictated that the conventions
be held in different cities. The selection of both dates and places is
made by the national committees. In choosing a convention city
they are influenced by a variety of considerations, such as the avail-
392 Party and Political Organization [1924
ability of a large auditorium, financial guarantees, the accessibility
of the place, the political strategy of the choice, and so on.
The Republican Convention, which meets in Cleveland this year,
will have 1109 delegates and an equal number of alternates. The
Democratic Convention, which assembles in New York City, will be
slightly smaller, with 1098 delegates. Hence the entire membership
of a national convention, counting delegates, alternates, officials,
and attendants, usually runs above 2500, in addition to which there
are several hundred newspaper men who must be accommodated
either on the floor, on the platform, or somewhere else within range of
the speakers. All others who are fortunate enough to obtain tickets
go to the galleries, and these, though they accommodate several
thousand spectators, are never roomy enough to hold a small fraction
of those who apply.
On the floor of the convention hall there are wooden poles set up,
and attached to these are placards, each bearing the name of a state.
The delegates group themselves accordingly, with the alternates
directly in rear of them. The hour for the opening of the convention
arrives; the chairman of the national committee calls it to order and
introduces the temporary presiding officer. The latter has been
selected in advance and his principal function is to make a “keynote”
speech; in other words, a formal address in which the party’s platform
is forecast. In the old days it was necessary to choose a leather-lunged
orator for this job, but amplifiers have now come to the rescue. At
best the convention hall is a noisy place, even when the delegates are
making an effort to be quiet and to hear what is being said. Every
delegate is on edge, anxious to get to the main business and have it
over with. Long speeches, no matter how excellent in quality, are
unwelcome.
But the convention cannot get to its main business, which is the
nominating of a presidential candidate, until some preliminaries are
finished. The credentials of delegates have to be verified, rules of
procedure adopted, permanent officers appointed, and a platform
drafted. This work is done by committees which bring in their
reports on the day after they are named, and these reports are usually
adopted by the convention with equal promptness unless there is an
insurrection, in which case the preliminaries may occupy several
days.
No. 93] The National Conventions 393
Sooner or later, but commonly the third day of the convention,
the work of making a nomination begins. The proceedings start by
having the secretary call the roll of the states in alphabetical order,
Alabama first and Wyoming last. When the name of a state is called,
the chairman of its delegation may present a name, or he may yield
his turn to some other state which is farther down the roll, thus per-
mitting its delegation to name a favorite son. In this way, one after
another, a half dozen or more candidates may be proposed for the
favor of the convention. Then the first ballot is in order.
Printed or written ballots are never used at national conventions.
All voting is oral and open. The roll of the states is called once more
and each delegation, through its chairman, announces its vote. It
was formerly the rule at Democratic conventions that the vote of
the entire delegation from each state must be cast as a unit whenever
a majority of the delegation so demanded; but this rule has now been
considerably modified. The Republicans, on the other hand, have
never had a “unit rule” but have permitted delegations to report a
divided vote whenever there has been a failure to agree unanimously.
In any event most delegations vote as a unit, especially on the first
ballot, and some of them are kept so well in hand that they continue
to do so throughout the convention.
At the Republican convention a majority of the delegates is suff-
cient to make the ballot decisive. But the Democrats require a two-
thirds vote. Five hundred and fifty votes will be sufficient to settle
the matter at the Cleveland convention, but it will take 732 votes to
effect the choice of a Democratic standard bearer at the New York
gathering. The ostensible purpose of this two-thirds rule is to keep
a few large states from determining the choice of the convention, as
they conceivably might do under the majority plan if they happened
to be united; but the requirement of a two-thirds consensus is regarded
by many Democrats as unjustifiable and there has been a growing
demand for its abrogation.
Occasionally a convention settles the presidential nomination on
the first ballot. More often, however, the first ballot shows a scatter-
ing of votes and proves indecisive. Then the convention proceeds
to ballot a second time, a third time, and so on until a decision is
reached. As successive ballots are taken there is a switching of votes
from one candidate to another; the favorite sons drop out one by one:
394 Party and Political Organization [1924
the “dark horses” are trotted into the arena, and all manner of deals
are made by the men who control various delegations. Sometimes
it requires a large number of ballotings to reach a decision. In 1880
Garfield was not chosen until 36 ballots had been taken, and Woodrow
Wilson did not clinch his first nomination until the 46th. Meanwhile,
as ballot after ballot is being taken, the strategists and wirepullers of
the convention rush madly about, holding whispered conferences
amid the din of the convention floor or in some accessible place out-
side. Delegations march around the hall, cheering vociferously for
their heroes, while bands blare forth and the galleries join in the
pandemonium. It is one of the great absurdities of American govern-
ment that we should expect the virtual selection of the nation’s chief
executive to be made by such a process and in such an environment.
Nothing could be farther removed from what the Fathers of the Re-
public had in mind.
It is not surprising, under the circumstances, that national con-
ventions should sometimes do strange things, for even the most cool-
headed among men can hardly fail to be swept off their balance by
the whirling excitement of the affair. Left to itself a national con-
vention would act exactly like any other mob, and the leaders are well
aware of this; so they do not leave the convention to itself. They
take every possible means to hold it in check, to ensure its docility,
and to determine its decision. They are aided in doing this by the
self-evident fact that a gathering of more than a thousand excitable
delegates must have leadership from some quarter; it cannot lead
itself anywhere save into chaos. The ultimate action of a national
convention is almost always determined, therefore, by the success
with which a relatively few men can assert their mastery by direct
control or by compromise. We say that the convention nominates;
what we really mean is that a few leaders do it, and the convention
then ratifies their action.
It is easy, of course, to pick flaws in this system of nominating
candidates for the presidency. As a system it leaves much to be de-
sired. But it is by no means so easy to devise something that would
be demonstrably an improvement. Ten years ago President Wilson
urged that the nominations be made by direct presidential primaries
in all the states, each voter expressing his preference. This would
leave the national conventions with no function but to frame the
No. 93] The National Conventions 395
party platforms. The people would nominate their candidates for
the presidency just as they now pick their candidates for the gover-
norship in many of the states.
The idea sounds attractive, no doubt, but it would be wholly im-
practicable in operation. The popular vote, at a nation-wide presi-
dential primary, would frequently be split among several candidates
and no one would have a clear majority. What then? Would the
nomination go to the one who obtained a plurality, or would there
be a second popular primary? The former alternative would hardly
be an improvement on our present system; the latter would sometimes
entail the holding of a dozen primaries before a decision could be
reached. When there is a general consensus upon any particular
candidate the convention method of making the nomination is quite
as satisfactory as any other; when there is no general agreement,
but a division of support among several aspirants, there is no way of
securing a majority choice except by deliberation and compromise.
A primary can act, but it cannot deliberate or compromise. That is
the principal reason why we keep the convention as a nominating
agency, despite its serious shortcomings.
We complain that the convention plan puts too much power into
the hands of a few men, and our complaint is all-too-well founded.
But no matter what governmental device we may adopt we shall not
avoid the gravitation of large powers into the hands of the few. Gov-
ernment by the whole people is a pleasing platitude, but the world
has never had (and never can have) a government of that sort. Gov-
ernment by the whole people is a contradiction in terms. If the whole
people undertook to govern by direct action they would give us some-
thing chaotic, but it would not be “government” as men commonly
understand that term. The people as a whole have neither the knowl-
edge, the time, the interest, nor the desire to exercise the actual
functions of government. Nobody knows this better than the dema-
gogues who flatter the people by assuring them that they have. De-
inocracy has functioned best where the people have recognized the
inevitability of government by the few and have seen to it that these
few are wisely chosen.
William B. Munro, in Independent (Boston, 1924), CXII, 306-307.
CHAPTER XVIII — PUBLIC QUESTIONS IN
STATES AND» CITIES
94. A City Reformer (1901)
BY MAYOR TOM JOHNSON (1913)
Johnson (1854-1913) started as clerk in a street railway office, and there invented
several railway devices. He afterward became an owner of street railway properties
of which he disposed when he entered politics. His plans of municipal ownership
attracted nation-wide attention. He was a Representative from Ohio from 1891 to
1895. As mayor of Cleveland (1901-1909) he introduced several radical reforms
in the city government.—His autobiography, My Story, edited by E. J. Hauser,
was published in 1913. On reforms of another kind, in San Francisco, see No. 95
below.
ae. NE of the first things which engaged my attention was
the selection of my cabinet, and I made a good many
mistakes in my earliest appointments. It was about a year before I
really succeeded in getting an efficient set of directors.
There were innumerable matters calling for immediate consideration
and I acted as quickly as possible in as many directions as I could.
The secret of a good executive is this—one who always acts quickly
and is sometimes right.
In less than a week after taking office I ordered uniformed police-
men stationed at the doors of gambling houses and houses of prosti-
tution having saloons in connection, and instructed them to take the
names and addresses of all persons who entered. It makes a man
mighty uncomfortable to go on record in this way, even if he gives a
fictitious name and address. This method proved so successful as
to the gambling houses that in a short time public gambling in Cleve-
land was practically abolished. I knew that we couldn’t rid the city
of the social evil any more than we could rid it of private gambling,
but I was determined to permit no saloons in connection with houses
of prostitution and to destroy the pernicious practice of the police of
levying fines upon unfortunate women. It had long been the custom
396
No. 94] A City Reformer 397
in Cleveland, as in other large cities, for the police to raid these houses
and collect a lot of fines whenever the funds of the police court got
low. This simply amounted to blackmail and hadn’t the slightest
effect in checking the evil, but rather stimulated it and gave rise to a
horrible system of favoritism and extortion. I called my policemen
together and told them that not a cent was to come into the city’s
hands by this method, that if the police court had to depend for
revenue upon fines imposed in this manner, it would have to go with-
out pay. Street soliciting by either sex was strictly prohibited.
You can’t legislate men or women into being good, but you can
remove artificial stimulants to make them bad. Cleveland’s way of
dealing with this problem during my administration compares very
favorably, I believe, with the methods employed by any other Ameri-
can city. It became an established part of the policy of Chief Kohler—
of whom more later—but the idea of placing a uniformed officer at
the entrance to places of questionable repute did not originate with
the chief or with me. It was a plan my father used while he was chief
of police of Louisville, and he got it from Yankee Bly, a detective
famous in Kentucky in the sixties and seventies. . .
I refused to sign city ordinances unless they were properly engrossed.
I insisted that everybody who had anything to do should do it the
best. that it could be done, and altogether we were a pretty busy lot
of workers. So many things seemed to demand attention at once that
I had my hand on every department of the city government before
I had been in office a month. Of course all these activities cost money
and as there wasn’t sufficient available money in sight, the usual
howl of “extravagance” was raised. But I knew these things had to
be done if we were to keep our promise to give good government and
I went ahead and did them, trusting to devise a way to get the funds
afterwards.
Under what is called economy in city government there is much
foolish holding back of necessary public improvements. If fraud and
graft are kept out there is not apt to be much unwisdom in public
expenditures; and from the business man’s standpoint the return for
the original outlay is very large—even where debt is created within
reasonable limits. . . .
Limitation on taxes for public works is as foolish as limitation on
increase in capital and plant of manufacturing enterprises. The
398 Public Questions in States and Cities [r901
question is not “how much do you spend?” but “how wisely do you
spend it?” To economize on needed public improvements is worse
than wasteful.
The generally accepted standard of values in this connection is all
wrong. So obsessed have we become with the idea of property rights
that we are constantly forgetting that in the last analysis we are deal-
ing with men and women and children and not with things.
But to give “good government” in the ordinarily accepted sense
of the term, wasn’t the thing I was in public life for. It was a part of
our policy from the beginning of our work in Cleveland, it is true, but
as a side issue, merely. While we tried to give the people clean and
well lighted streets, pure water, free access to their parks, public baths
and comfort stations, a good police department, careful market in-
spection, a rigid system of weights and measures, and to make the
charitable and correctional institutions aid rather than punish wrong-
doers, and to do the hundred and one things that a municipality
ought to do for its inhabitants—while we tried to do all these things,
and even to outstrip other cities in the doing of them we never lost
sight of the fact that they were not fundamental. However desirable
good government or government by good men may be, nothing worth
while will be accomplished unless we have sufficient wisdom to search
for the causes that really corrupt government. I agree with those
who say that it is big business and the kind of big business that deals
in and profits from public service grants and taxation injustices that
is the real evil in our cities and the country to-day. This big business
furnishes the sinews of war to corrupt bosses regardless of party
affiliations. This big business which profits by bad government must
stand against all movements that seek to abolish its scheme of ad-
vantage. an.
The constitution of Ohio says that all property shall be appraised
at its true value in money and the statute carrying this provision into
effect uses the same words. . . .
The local taxing board, or board of equalization, appointed by
previous mayors, was in the control of tax-dodgers. While it was
really vested with great power this board had exercised that power
principally in correcting clerical errors or in adding to the tax dupli-
cate the value of additions to small property like painting houses or
putting in bathtubs... .
Tio. 94] A City Reformer 399
Small taxpayers generally were paying full rates, while the public
service corporations, steam railroads and large land-owning interests
were paying between ten and twenty per cent only of the amount
required by law. More than half the personal property and nearly
all the valuable privileges were escaping taxation.
At first our Tax School was maintained by private funds and had
no legal connection with the city government, but those in charge of it
were granted the use of city maps and were permitted to call upon
employes of the civil engineer’s department for help in connection
with the maps. Witt was the first man I appointed and he objected
to taking the position, but I would not take “no” for an answer.
The clerks employed first copied the records in the county auditor’s
office showing the assessed value of all lots and buildings in the city.
From these records, on a map sixteen feet square and comprising one
whole ward, we showed the inequalities in assessed values. Citizens
in general and tax-payers in particular were invited to a large room
in the City Hall, at one end of which this map was suspended. Pur-
suing this method by multiplying the number of maps the assessment
of real estate block by block and ward by ward was shown. Discussion
was invited, criticisms and suggestions asked for, and by means of
this discussion, together with a searching investigation of the records
of real estate transfers and leases, we ascertained the real value of one
foot front of land by one hundred feet in depth, which method is
known as the Somers unit system of taxation and without which no
fair and accurate appraisal of land can be made.
When the unit values were finally agreed to they were written
into the center of each block on the various maps. The members of
the city board of equalization then signed the map making it thereby
a public record showing the date on which the values had been agreed
upon. Then a photographer made a picture of the map and negatives
of this photograph were furnished the clerks who were at work in
another room, and they . . . wrote into each space provided on these
small maps, the actual cash value of each particular piece of land and
the assessed value as well. . . .
The city board of equalization, already referred to, was a municipa!
institution of long standing. Its members were appointed by the
mayor. It was these members who signed the map in the Tax School
and it was this board which would have corrected the inequalities in
400 Public Questions in States and Cities [1906
taxation had not the State legislature wiped it out by legislative enactment,
and provided in its stead a board of review appointed by State
officials.
This board of review was paid from county funds for a purely mu-
nicipal service. To this board we sent the names of all owners and
the description of their property which was underassessed. To tne
people we sent the letter already mentioned and requested all those
whose property was overassessed to seek their remedy from the board
of review.
So far as I know this was the first intelligent and concerted effort
io relieve the people of Ohio of the injustice of the privilege in taxation
which had been a decennial bone of contention in the State for eighty
Years WEY:
The question of taxation was no less a State question than a local
one. Indeed ovr whole Cleveland movement was more than local,
more than a one city movement from the very beginning. The big
lesson we started out to teach through the Tax School and in other
ways was that taxation in all its forms, however designated, is merely
the rule by which burdens are distributed among individuals and
corporations. Farms, buildings, personal property, land, pay no
taxes, yet so persistently have these inanimate objects been spoken
of as being taxed that the public has all but lost sight of the fact that
it is men and women who are taxed and not things. So long and so
universally has taxation been regarded as a fiscal system only that
comparatively few people recognize it for what it is, viz.: a human
question.
Tom Johnson, My Story (New York, Viking Press, 1913), 121-131 passim.
Hg Ness ey at al
95. Purifying San Francisco Politics (1906)
BY FREMONT OLDER (1926)
This is a part of the life story of a San Francisco newspaper editor (now editor
of the San Francisco Call) who engaged in a crusade of political reform over a period
of many years. Older fought crooks vigorously with their own weapons and gained
notable success, the value of which he afterward questioned. Part of the book
is devoted to questions of prison reform and the reclamation of prisoners. All
No. 95] Purifying San Francisco Politics 401
characters are sufficiently identified in the text except Heney, who was a special
prosecuting attorney, and Burns, renowned detective. For another view of munic-
ipal government problems, see No. 94 above.
FTER I furnished Heney with the evidence of the bribery of
Ruef in the matter of the prize fight permits, there was a long
interval of searching and investigation without results. Spreckels
was somewhat discouraged. At length, however, the evidence se-
cured by Burns was presented to the Oliver Grand Jury, and early
in the fall of 1906 Schmitz and Ruef were both indicted for extortion
in the French restaurant cases.
We all felt these cases to be a side issue. We had already suspected
the bribery of the supervisors for the overhead trolley franchise, and
our principal efforts were spent in trying to get at those facts. .
The indictment of Ruef and Schmitz were ominous danger signals
to [Calhoun]. He was a very brilliant man, clever, resourceful, daring,
ruthless; of a temper that stopped at nothing. He knew what we did
not know at that time. He knew that he had paid $200,000 to Abra-
ham Ruef through his attorney, Tirey L. Ford, for the purpose of
bribing the supervisors to give the United Railroads the overhead
trolley franchise.
He knew, when Heney was appointed and upheld by Judge Graham,
that he stood in danger of being exposed. Sooner or later, the trail
we were following would lead to him.
His first move was characteristically adroit and unscrupulous. He
precipitated a street car strike. ...
There was a long investigation of the claims of the carmen for more
pay, a lot of testimony was taken, and some time passed before the
matter was adjusted. The men were not satisfied with the terms that
the United Railroads offered them. Calhoun seized upon the situa-
tion to bring on a strike among the carmen. The deal was made in
Mayor Schmitz’ house, with Bowling, secretary-treasurer of the
Carmen’s Union, acting with Calhoun and Schmitz.
Cornelius, the president of the Carmen’s Union; Michael Casey,
Andrew Furuseth and other labor men were anxious to prevent the
carmen from striking, fearing they would lose and hoping that Heney’s
investigation would lead to the discovery of the bribing of the super-
visors by Calhoun.
In this situation, Cornelius stood against the strike and Bowling
402 Public Questions in States and Cities [1906
for it. Our plan was to try to bring about a secret ballot, reasoning
that if the men voted secretly they would vote against the strike.
Bowling was advocating an open ballot, counting on the men’s fear
to vote openly against the strike. Bowling won out. .. .
Immediately the street cars were tied up. This second calamity,
following hard upon the disaster of the fire, and halting the city’s
attempt at rebuilding, infuriated the business men and property
owners of San Francisco. Calhoun knew the city; he knew what would
influence the powerful men of the city. He knew that San Francisco
was in ruins and that the business men above all things wanted the
street cars to run; otherwise they would be utterly ruined.
With the entire approval of the business men of San Francisco, he
imported professional gangs of strike-breakers, headed by Farley, and
attempted to run the cars. The strikers attacked these strike-breakers
viciously. Rioting broke out on the streets, men were beaten, crip-
pled, killed. The city was in a turmoil. In the midst of it, in the most
picturesque way, Calhoun rode up and down Market street in his
automobile, winning tremendous admiration from the business people
and property owners.
““There’s a man who isn’t afraid of anything! He’s for San Fran-
cisco and the rebuilding of San Francisco. He’ll break this strike,
and save us, if any man can,” they said on every hand. Calhoun
could not have made a better move than secretly to force this strike,
and then boldly and openly to break it, by force.
It was a spectacular move, cleverly planned; endearing him to the
powerful people of San Francisco, who hated labor unions anyway,
and particularly at this time, when the hard work of rehabilitation
and the desperate task of keeping business going depended on the
street cars moving.
When the strike was in progress the men received $5 a week each
in benefits. One week the money did not come—$5,000 for a thousand
men. ‘The international president, McMahon, was away from his
home office and had failed to send it. The Labor men who had been
with me in the fight to prevent the strike came to me and said: “If
we don’t have $5,000 by one o’clock to-day, the strike will be broken.
If the men don’t get their $5 apiece at one o’clock they’ll give in and
go back to work, and all their efforts and suffering will come to noth-
ing.”
No. 95] Purifying San Francisco Politics 403
I had exerted every effort of which I was capable in trying to pre-
vent the calling of the street car strike, but I did not want to see the
strike lost now and the men who already had been led into so much
suffering forced to lose their chance of getting something out of it
all. Therefore, since it was necessary to have the $5,000 by one
o’clock that afternoon if these men were to get their strike benefits
and be held in line, I determined to do my utmost to provide the
$5,000.
I found two friends who were willing to lend me $2,500 each. I
had the money changed into $5 gold pieces, put it in a sack, and sent
it out to the headquarters of the Carmen’s Union. Bowling, the
traitor secretary-treasurer, who had planned the strike with Calhoun,
was there. The sack was given to him and he was told to distribute
the money among the men. He was obliged to do so, but he kept the
sack and carried it to Calhoun as evidence that I had saved the men
from losing the strike at that time.
Eventually, Calhoun, through his force of imported strike-breakers,
succeeded in crushing the strike he had begun, and the men went back
to work—beaten; and Calhoun became the hero of the hour. Before
that time came, however, we struck a trail that led us hot on his
track. We were getting closer to him every day.
While we were in the midst of our investigations, Schmitz suddenly
set out for Europe. The day after he had left it was announced in
the newspapers that he had dismissed the president of the Board of
Works, Frank Maestretti. The news came as a thunderbolt.
Could it be possible that Ruef and Schmitz dared to dismiss Frank
Maestretti, a man who, we felt convinced, was in on all the city graft,
or at least knew of it?
I was very much excited, and sent for Maestretti and Golden M.
Roy. I knew Roy to be a close friend of Maestretti, the two men
being partners in the Pavilion Skating Rink. They came to my office,
and I talked with them about the removal of Maestretti. They still
hoped he would be reinstated by wire from Schmitz.
I said: “Well, if he is not, perhaps you will be willing to talk with
me.” After some discussion, they left, saying they would know about
it next day, and asking me to call on them then.
On the following day I met them in their office at Pavilion Rink.
I told them that I represented powerful interests in San Francisco
404 Public Questions in States and Cities [1906
who were going to get the facts of the graft, and that I thought they
would do well to get in on the ground floor with me. They admitted
that they could tell me some very interesting things, but they put me
off, saying they would see me again.
Maestretti followed me out of the office and warned me against
Roy, saying he was a Ruef man and could not be trusted. When I
reported this to Burns he very cleverly analyzed it as meaning that
Maestretti wanted the whole thing to himself and wanted Roy shut
Ole 5 oc
Burns had many meetings with Maestretti, and he soon discovered
that Roy was the man who knew all the facts, and that unless we could
get Roy we would get nowhere.
“Work on Roy,” he said.
In my eagerness to get information from Roy my mind went back
to the days before the fire. At that time Roy owned a jewelry store
on Kearney street, near the Bulletin office. A friend of his called on
me and said that Schmitz had offered Roy a position as police com-
missioner. Having a wife and family whom he dearly loved, Roy did
not want to take the place if I was going to attack him... .
I reproved Roy for having anything to do with Schmitz. I said
that he was a man of family, that he ought not to risk his reputation
by affiliating with such men as Ruef and Schmitz. Afterward I learned
that this mild criticism worried him tremendously.
Recalling this episode gave me an idea. I had a very violent,
personal attack written on Roy. It was a page article, embellished
with pictures. I raked up everything in Roy’s activities that could
place him in a discreditable light before the community. Then I had
a page proof of this article printed secretly in the Bulletin office. When
it was ready I laid it face down on my desk and sent for Roy. Burns
waited in an adjoining room.
Roy came into my office. He said: “Well, what can I do for you,
Mr. Older?” in what I thought was a patronizing tone.
I was very much excited. “You can’t do anything for me,” I
said, “but I’m going to put you in the penitentiary.” I picked up
the page and handed it to him to read.
He began to read it, turned pale, and reeled on his feet. ‘‘ Read it
all,” I said.
“Tm reading it all.”
No. 96] The Recall 405
He finished, laid it down, and said: “ What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to tell the truth.”
“All right,” he said. “Pm willing to tell you the truth—every-
thing.” I pressed a button and Burns came in. I turned Roy over
to Burns and left the room.
In a little while Burns called me and said: “Roy wants to see his
friends before he talks.”
I said: “I don’t think we ought to let him see his friends. It’s a
friend; it isn’t friends. It’s Ruef he wants to see.” Roy sat there
without saying a word.
“No,” Burns said. ‘TI think it best to let him see his friends.
I said nothing more. After a moment Roy got up and walked out.
He was shadowed, of course. He went directly to his home, where
his wife and children were, and stayed there, sending no messages and
telephoning nobody till midnight. Then he telephoned Burns and
asked to see him. When they met he told Burns much that he knew
about the Ruef briberies. This interview led directly to the con-
fessions of the eighteen supervisors who had taken money in the over-
head trolley franchise deal. We had reached Calhoun at last.
Fremont Older, My Own Story (New York, Macmillan, 1926), 89-98 passim.
———_
96. The Recall (1912)
BY PROFESSOR ARTHUR N. HOLCOMBE
For Holcombe see No. 29 above. Roosevelt’s ill-advised advocacy of the recall
of judicial decisions was one of his stumbling-blocks in the election of 1912, as men-
tioned in No. 30 above; see also Nos. 102 and 103 below. For further developments
in the use of the recall see American Year Book, 1913 and following years.—Bibliog-
raphy: E. P. Oberholtzer, Initiative, Referendum and Recall.
HE most discussed feature of popular government during 1912
has been the recall. During rọrr the recall was adopted in
California and Arizona (in the latter states, applying only to legisla-
tive and executive officers), and provision for the submission in 1912
of constitutional amendments establishing the recall was made in
Idaho, Nevada, and Washington. In the same year provision was
406 Public Questions in States and Cities [r912
made for the submission of recall amendments in 1914 in North Da-
kota and Wisconsin, provided the legislatures of those states meeting
in 1913 indorse the proposed amendments. In 1912 the Arizona
legislature provided for the submission of an amendment to the people
at the general election extending the recall to the judiciary and the
Louisiana legislature proposed a recall amendment not applying to
the judiciary. Recall amendments were also submitted upon the
initiative of the requisite number of voters in Arkansas and Colorado.
On the other hand, constitutional conventions in New Hampshire
and Ohio declined to submit recall amendments, and in Indiana a
new constitution proposed in r911, containing a provision authorizing
the legislature to establish the recall, subject to certain restrictions,
was declared by the courts to have been improperly framed, and was
not submitted to the people. At the November election the recall
amendments were adopted in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada,
and Washington, but not in Louisiana. The Arkansas amendment
was defeated in September. .. .
The chief features of the state-wide recall are (1) its scope; (2) the
size of the petition required to institute a special recall election; (3)
the mode of conducting the election; and (4) the provision made for
acquainting the voters with the grounds of recall alleged by petitioners
and with the defense of the accused.
(1) The recall may apply to all elective state officers, or to all
except judicial officers. The former is the scope of the original Oregon
recall (1908), of the California (1911), Arizona (1911-12), Arkansas
(1912), Colorado (1912), and Nevada (1912) amendments, and of
the amendment proposed for submission in 1914 in North Dakota.
The Idaho, Louisiana, Washington, and Wisconsin amendments do
not apply to the judiciary. . . .
(3) There are several modes in which the recall may be conducted.
The name of the officer against whom the petition is filed may be
placed upon the official ballot at the special election, together with
those of other candidates for the office nominated by petition. If the
office-holder fails to secure a plurality of all votes cast, he is thereby
recalled and the candidate receiving a plurality is declared his suc-
cessor. This is the method adopted in Oregon in 1908. Or the recall
election proper may be preceded by a special primary, at which two
candidates are selected to compete for the office in question at an
No. 96] The Recall 407
ensuing election. If the office-holder fails to be renominated at the
primary he is thereby recalled. This is the method commonly used
in municipal recall elections, but has not been proposed for any state-
wide recall. Again, there may be a single election, but a separate
vote on the question of recall. In this case the name of the office-
holder does not appear as a candidate to succeed himself. Candidates
for the succession may be nominated by petition, by a special primary,
or by designation of any appropriate party committee recognized by
law. Ifa majority of those voting at the election vote for the recall,
the office-holder is removed from office, and the office goes to the
candidate with the highest vote. A vote for a successor is void unless.
the voter votes also on the question of recall, and if the majority vote
against recall all votes for a successor are void. This is substantially
the method adopted in California in 1911, and is followed in Arkansas
and Colorado. The Oregon plan is followed in Arizona, Nevada, and
North Dakota. The Idaho and Wisconsin amendments are general
in terms, and leave to the legislature the task of filling in details.
(4) The grounds for the recall, according to the original Oregon
plan, are to be set forth at the head of the recall petition. Further
official publicity for the charges is provided by reservation of space on
the ballot for a statement by the petitioners in not more than 200
words. The office-holder against whom the charges are brought may
set forth his defense in a similar statement on the ballot. Further-
more, the legislature is authorized to provide some compensation
to the office-holder for the expense of his campaign should he not
be recalled. Similar provisions are contained in most of the later
recall amendments. In general the machinery of the recall adopted
in California, and followed in the amendments submitted under the
initiative in Arkansas and Colorado, seems an improvement over the
machinery of the original plan. . . .
In Arizona the legislature of 1912 provided for the extension of the
recall to United States senators, congressmen, and the United States
judge for the Arizona district. As all of these officers hold their po-
sitions under the federal constitution, and as the federal judge is not
even elected by the people of Arizona, the recall cannot be applied to
them by the ordinary process of an amendment to the state constitu-
tion. Consequently what may be termed the advisory recall of United
States senators and congressmen and the advisory resignation and
408 Public Questions in States and Cities [1912
appointment of federal judge were established by statute. The ad-
visory recall of United States senators and congressmen and the
advisory resignation of federal judge were doubtless suggested by
corresponding constitutional provisions for the mandatory recall
of state officers, including the judiciary. The advisory appointment
of federal judge was apparently established upon the theory that the
President, in the selection of local judicial appointees, customarily
enjoys the benefit of advice from some representative of the locality
concerned, generally the United States senator, if of the same party.
Why not substitute the people of the state for the senator as the
source of the advice? The Arizona law, therefore, provides for an
advisory vote to indicate the popular choice of a candidate for a
judicial appointment, as well as to indicate the popular desire for the
resignation of a United States district judge. . . .
The recall of judicial decisions is a device first suggested by Theodo”
Roosevelt in an address before the Ohio Constitutional Convention,
Feb. 21, 1912. Its purpose may best be explained in the language of
its first public sponsor. In his speech to the Progressive National
Convention at Chicago in August Mr. Roosevelt said:
In dealing with the fundamental law of the land, in assuming finally to interpret
it, and therefore finally to make it, the acts of the courts should be subject to, and
not above, the final control of the people as a whole. . . . The people themselves
must be the ultimate makers of their own Constitution, and where their agents
differ in their interpretations of the Constitution the people themselves should be
given the chance, after full and deliberate judgment, authoritatively to settle what
interpretation it is that their representatives shall thereafter adopt as binding.
Whenever in our constitutional system of government there exist general pro-
hibitions that, as interpreted by the courts, nullify, or may be used to nullify,
specific laws passed, and admittedly passed, in the interest of social justice, we
are for such immediate law or amendment to the Constitution, if that be necessary,
as will thereafter permit a reference to the people of the public effect of such de-
cision under forms securing full deliberation, to the end that the specific act of
the legislative branch of the government thus judicially nullified, and such amend-
ments thereof as come within its scope and purpose, may constitutionally be ex-
cepted by vote of the people from the general prohibitions, the same as if that par-
ticular act had been expressly excepted when the prohibition was adopted. This
will necessitate the establishment of machinery for making much easier of amend-
ment both the National and the several State Constitutions, especially with the
view of prompt action on certain judicial decisions—action as specific and limited
as that taken by the passage of the eleventh amendment to the National Con-
stitution.
No. 97| The Planning of Cities 409
It is pointed out by the advocates of the recall of judicial decisions
that the Dred Scott decision of 1857 was, in effect, recalled by Section
I of the Fourteenth Amendment, adopted in 1868, and that the
income-tax decision of 1895 is now in process of recall by a pending
amendment. Mr. Roosevelt’s proposal is to expedite such recalls
whenever they are clearly demanded by public opinion. . . .
An amendment to the state constitution, restricting the right to
declare laws unconstitutional to the supreme court, and providing a
more direct process by which nullified statutes may be constitution-
alized, so to say, was submitted under the initiative in November
to the people of Colorado and adopted by them by a vote of 55,416
to 40,891. This amendment virtually authorizes the people by the
use of the referendum to order the enforcement of a statute which
has been enacted by the legislature and approved by the governor but
vetoed by the supreme court.
Arthur N. Holcombe, in American Year Book (New York, Appleton, 1913), 64-67
passim.
— o
97. The Planning of Cities (1912)
BY E. C. GARDNER
The discovery that growing population often made older cities unlivable, and
entailed great expenditures for re-planning, has given impetus to this new science,
which seeks to anticipate growth and to plan with beauty and unity in mind. For
interesting suggestions along this line see Benton MacKaye, The New Exploration.
OST American cities of over 50,000 population naturally fall
into commercial, manufacturing and residential sections. The
commercial is devoted to business of all kinds, excepting large manu-
facturing. The more homogeneous and compact its composition the
better; and its actual requirements in different cities are almost iden-
tical. The needs of manufacturing, as regards ground plan, depend
on local conditions which vary widely and are often closely related
to transportation problems and to the housing of the workmen. Even
a small city may have many manufacturing districts. Plans of the
residential portions have usually been determined by local topography,
by accident, and by real estate owners and promoters.
410 Public Questions in States and Cities [r912:
The financial value of civic esthetics is great; but the commercial
portion of a city can be made beautiful in only one way—that is, by
supplying in the most simple, direct and scientific maner whatever
is necessary for its business prosperity. One mistake of the average
layman is in beginning at the wrong end. Beauty is always willing
to be won, if wisely sought, but in business development, utility is her
most successful wooer. It is another error to assume that beautiful
parts make a beautiful whole. That is exactly what never—almost
never—happens. The most harrowing inharmonies may be composed
of exquisitely lovely units.
Undoubtedly the professional adviser has his place in civic develop-
ment if, in addition to professional skill, he has the moral strength
and mental acumen to detect and defy the efforts of the unscrupulous
who would artfully use him as a means of gaining their own selfish
ends; but for the elementary features of the fit and characteristic plan
of any city, the residents who are familiar with the conditions and
have given the various problems long and careful study, are most
likely to arrive at safe and sane conclusions, and they should at least
work with him. Moreover—and this is a point of great significance,.
though often overlooked—every city and town, like every man,
should rejoice and be glad in a personality of its own. This personality
is apt to be modified, if not quite obliterated, when the planning is put
into the hands of a stranger.
Facility of transportation is to the business city what the circula-
tion of the blood is to an animal, or of the sap to a tree—the measure
of its life, the source of its proper development. This means such an
arrangement of alleys, streets, thoroughfares and avenues as will
allow the most free, direct and economical migration and transporta-
tion from each portion to every other, from all parts of the city to the
surrounding country, and vice versa.
Once, among the most civilized people, the market place, the forum,
the cathedral square, the temple portico—in later times the “meeting
house’’—were in actual fact the social and political headquarters
of the community. Now, to establish in the commercial portion
of a great city one conspicuous “center” of civic beauty, society,
education, of important affairs of all kinds—around which public
interests should revolve, to which they should look for initiative,
and from which all should radiate—is neither possible nor desira-
No. 97] The Planning of Cities AII
ble, unless the city happens to be the capital of the state or na-
tion.
Numerous central points, stations, foci, or whatever they may be
called, may be useful and logical in a large and growing city, but the
municipality should not provide greater size and elegance for any one
than for each and all of them. To expend an undue proportion of its
revenues for esthetic display, or for advertising purposes in a single
locality, leaving the remainder in comparative poverty and nakedness,
is unreasonable, undemocratic and unjust.
What, for instance, can be said in justification of a city which,
while suffering from a lack of schools, of necessary bridges, of safe and
convenient railway stations, of adequate playgrounds, of suitable
hospitals, of proper police force, and from a perennial nuisance of dust
in the streets and dirt in the alleys, still imposes a tax equivalent to
twenty dollars each on every man, woman, child and infant in the
city in order to erect a monumental building by no means indispen-
sable, that has neither dignity of location nor suitable environment
—this being a single feature of an attempt to develop a “Grand
Civic Center” in a well-known city of nearly 100,000 inhabitants?
The width of main thoroughfares is a matter for careful study, too
often left to the greed and caprice of real estate owners or the theories
of experts. In manufacturing and residential regions they can hardly
be too wide; in commercial and especially in retail districts, less so.
Greater width there involves greater cost of construction and main-
tenance, a loss of time, much inconvenience in crossing from side to
side, and, in northern latitudes, large expense for the removal of
snow.
In old cities increasing the width of the main avenues to accommo-
date the increasing business is a difficult proposition, because the
street fronts, which are the most expensive parts of the buildings,
block the way. Cutting new streets through sections solidly built up
is wasteful and can only be justified by imperative need. Many main
streets in the old New England cities might be arcaded, throwing the
entire sidewalks behind the present line of store fronts, supporting
the walls above on columns and carrying glass roofs over the inter-
sections of the cross streets. The enormous advantage on retail
streets of such arcades, especially in northern cities, the cheapness of
artificial light and the comparatively small loss of room are strong
412 Public Questions in States and Cities [1917
reasons for the adopt on of this expedient where traffic is congested
on account of inadequate width of streets.
These and other features of city planning are so simple that the
plain layman need not err in their application to local conditions,
provided he will not forget that the commercial portion of a city is
one great institution for transacting business, for which the funda-
mental requirements are safety, comfort and efficiency; in brief,
utility; without which permanent beauty is impossible.
E. C. Gardner, Planning the Commercial Portions of Cities in American City,
May, 1912 (New York), VI, 724-727.
ee
98. The Initiative and Referendum (1917)
BY DELEGATE ALBERT BUSHNELL HART
For Hart, see No. 13 above. The initiative and referendum have been adopted
in many states; referendum is largely used to ascertain popular opinion with re-
spect to the amendment of state constitutions; the initiation of laws by petition of
citizens has played a very minor part.—Bibliography asin No. 96 above. Extended
debates on the question in the Debates of the Massachusetts Constitutional Conven-
tion (1917-1919).
NOW come to the third point, which is the apprehension felt by
some members concerning the I. and R. One would suppose from
the things that have been said about this measure that it had hoofs
and horns. I will not burden you with quotations on this subject.
The proprietor of a patent medicine in New England made a great
fortune out of his wares many years ago. How did he make his
fortune? Why, by a phrase. He advertised: “I won’t guarantee that
my Golden Discovery will cure every ill that flesh is heir to; it won’t
cure thunder-humor.” He sold thousands and thousands of bottles
to people who said: “ Well, I don’t know what aiis I have, but I know
I haven’t got thunder-humor, so I know it will be good for me.” The
opponents of the I. and R., at intervals, when something is said about
this measure, shake their heads and say: “It won’t cure thunder-
humor.” It is not the advocates of the measure who expect it to cure
everything.
No. 98] The Initiative and Referendum 413
I find two sets of conflicting arguments against it. One is that it is
out of accord entirely with the American spirit,—a totally unknown
system. Another is that it is a throw-back to a discarded method of
which our ancestors grew tired. Most reliance is placed on the argu-
ment that it isan abandonment of the fundamental principles of Amer-
ican government. That is curious, because if it is the case, think how
many of our sister states are without an American or a democratic
government. Think of the awful condition of the people in these
communities. Since the popular vote was introduced it appears that
350 propositions have been submitted under the initiative and ref-
erendum, of which 133 were accepted and 217 voted down. I shall
never forget the remark of a friend, a banker in Portland, Oregon, a
very conservative man, who had been Speaker of the House of Repre-
sentatives of his State and was very much against the I. and R. “It
is an awful thing, that I. and R.,” he said. “Why, it has got so bad
in Oregon that in the last election the people had to vote down two-
thirds of the measures that were presented to them.” In Oregon this
immoral method is so deeply seated that people actually use it to
defeat measures! It must be said that they had not before their
minds the sufferings of the members of this Convention who have
been able to see across the ages the Commonwealth of Massachusetts
devasted by freak laws passed by the friends of the I. and R... .
The two charges against the initiative and referendum that seem to
have most weight, that seem to stick closest, and therefore which I
would like if possible to erase from your minds, are, first, that it is a
minority method, under which a “mere minority” will make the
decisions, thence the argument passes to the point that a majority
ought not to make decisions; that is, that a minority will decide but a
majority ought not to prevail. The point that I want to make here
is that a proper vote under the initiative and referendum stands on
precisely the same footing as the election of members of this body, as
elections to the Legislature, as votes on referenda whether general or
local, as votes upon constitutional amendments. . . .
In the few minutes remaining I wish first of all to summarize several
points made at the previous session with regard to the general char-
acter of the I. and R.
(1) I should like to emphasize for the benefit of those in the Con-
vention whose minds are not clear upon this question, the fact that
414 Public Questions in States and Cities [r917
the I. and R. is in accordance with the previous practice of the Com-
monwealth of Massachusetts in most respects; and the proposed ref-
erendum in all respects. The Walker measure confers on that point
no further powers than those now enjoyed by the people of Massa-
chusetts except the right to pass upon acts of the Legislature without
the consent of the Legislature.
(2) The I. and R. is not out of accord with the American principles
of government, because it is in force in a considerable number of
States in the Union. Much has been said about the character of those
governments, because there have been disorders in Colorado and in
Arizona, and upon that I should like to make two remarks. The first
is: Who are the people, who own the capital in Colorado and in Ari-
zona, engaged in those mining operations in which there have been
disturbances? They are eastern capitalists to a very large degree.
The labor difficulties in those States are due as much to the owners of
the mines as to those who work in them. And I suppose there is no-
body here who would hesitate to invest money in Colorado or in
Arizona in what he thought was a good proposition lest the people
by the initiative and referendum in those States should take it away.
If you deny that the I. and R. is a reasonable part of the American
system of government, you throw a considerable number of States in
anarchy.
(3) Let us never forget that the Supreme Court of the United
States, having been asked in a case arising out of the Oregon initiative
and referendum to rule that the initiative and referendum was not
republican government, declined to interfere, asserting that the
question as to what was or was not a republican government under
the Federal Constitution was a question for Congress to settle, and
Congress has settled it by recognizing the authorities of the I. and R.
States in every case, without any suspicion or any limitation, not-
withstanding the fact that they are dependent in part upon the I.
andiRom a
I began by showing you that I myself was elected by about one-
fourth of the usual voters in the Eighth Congressional District of
Massachusetts; that every member, every one of the four members
elected from that district, was chosen by about the same vote, and
that every one of us is in a position to say that a fourth of the usual
voters are unintelligent voters; that there is not a man sitting here
No. 98] The Initiative and Referendum 415
who is not bound to admit that that fraction of the voters who
voted for that entire district are intelligent. If competent to pass
upon the question whether you and I shall be members of this Con-
vention, are they not equally competent to pass upon legislative
questions? ...
A deliberate and deliberative Legislature ought to be sufficient for
practical purposes, but I submit that there is not a State in the Union
in which the Legislature is sufficiently free from influences which do
not come directly from the voter. It is invisible government that
the gentleman has left out of account. We have heard a great deal
about ten men drawing up an initiative petition; about “a secret,
irresponsible committee sitting in some study;” ten men, every one
of whom has to sign his name and take oath to it. I should like to
ask the members of this Convention if they have ever heard of ten
men sitting in a study or an office or something of that kind and draft-
ing measures for the Legislature of Massachusetts without signing
their names, without any mortal man, except an intermediary between
them and certain persons in the Legislature, knowing who drafted
the bill? What we are asking for is a responsible initiative and not an
irresponsible. . .
The truth is that no measure on initiative is likely to get any head-
way unless it has the signatures of some known and responsible men
who represent some definite principle. People talk here as though
the action of ten men was final. For a constitutional amendment
you must get fifty thousand; for an act you must get twenty-five
thousand; and when you have twenty-five thousand you have a far
stronger backing than most of the legislation that now comes before
the General Court of Massachusetts.
Now, gentlemen, let me return to this question of the unintelligent
voter. In the first place, we are constantly told that there is distinc-
tion between voting for men and voting for measures. Unfortunately
for that argument there is no such difference recognized in the law of
Massachusetts. The elections for this Convention, or for a Governor,
are treated in precisely the same way as a constitutional amendment.
The main difficulty with all this argument that the irresponsible will
initiate amendments is simply that you leave out of account the
fact that the final decision is made by voters, by the same voters who
now vote upon constitutional amendments, who will vote upon the
416 Public Questions in States and Cities [1924
amendments submitted by this Convention; they are exactiy the
voters who will vote upon questions of the initiative.
Speech of Albert Bushnell Hart, in Debates in the Massachusetts Constitutional
Convention (Boston, State Printers, 1918), II, 446-452 passim.
——o
99. Traffic Problem of Chicago (1924)
BY E. S. TAYLOR
Taylor, as Manager of the Chicago Plan Commission, took a leading part in the
solving of problems arising from the congestion of the metropolis. Similar ambi-
tious projects have been under development in other cities, among them Cleveland
and Boston. The latter city has planned its through-traffic streets largely on the
basis of a novel and elaborate traffic survey.—Bibliography: The American City,
and other periodicals devoted to city planning and civic betterment; The American
Motorist, and other periodicals concerned with motoring and traffic problems.
HE mastery of the traffic situation in Chicago is bound up with
the execution of the Chicago Plan. Every Saturday night there
are one thousand, one hundred and fifty more automobiles upon the
streets of Chicago than there were on the preceding Saturday night.
This increase goes on week in and week out. By the close of the
present year there will be between sixty-five thousand and sixty-nine
thousand more machines upon the streets of Chicago than there were
on December 31, 1923. This gives an idea of the serious problem
confronting the Chicago Plan Commission in its efforts to expedite
the movement of persons and vehicles to and fro from one section of
the city to another.
So far as the traffic features of the Chicago Plan are concerned, the
Plan provides for three avenues of effort. The first of these is the
creation of a quadrangle of wide streets around the central business
district. Next is the provision of every possible channel of communi-
cation between the heart of Chicago and the north, the west, and the
south sides of the city. Thirdly, there is the provision for a system
of wide thoroughfares, such as are usually called “major streets,”
extending from one end of the city to the other. Construction work
on all three of these undertakings is now going forward. .. .
Chicago, as anv school child knows, is bounded on the east by the
No. 99] Traffic Problem of Chicago AI7
waters of Lake Michigan. Its development, therefore, ever since the
days of Fort Dearborn, has had of necessity to be south, west and
north. But as the frontier Indian trading post grew, developing
first into a village and then into a city, it ran against obstacles in all
three of these directions which forced its business growth up into the
air rather than outwards. These obstacles were the Chicago River
and the railroad rights of way, formidable enough to the north and
west, but even more so to the south, where nearly one square mile of
territory is absorbed by railroad occupancy to the extent that only
one single north-and-south street connects the central business dis-
trict with the south and southwest sides of the city through this
district.
Thus it was that in laying out the Plan of Chicago the technicians
provided for the development of a quadrangle of wide streets surround-
ing the heart of Chicago, for the purpose of allowing through-bound
trafic to go around the congested district rather than through it;
and for the further purpose of permitting the central business district
to grow and expand normally, so that it should occupy several times
its present restricted area of only one-quarter of a square mile.
Within Chicago’s loop today there are nineteen streets. Upon
fifteen of them are double-track street car lines with cars at present
turning in all four directions at nearly every intersection. A new plan
of traffic regulation eliminating left-hand turns in the loop is expected
to better conditions somewhat, but thorough-going and permanent
improvement will come only as the result of four streets comprising
this quadrangle which will—it is expected—he entirely finished within
the next two or three years, and once the quadrangle is in operation it
will cut present loop street traffic nearly in half. Traffic counts show
that upon the downtown streets of Chicago every week day there are
about 175,000 vehicles, 10,000 street cars, and nearly a million pedes-
tians anm:
The improvement of Michigan Avenue has been successful beyond
almost all hopes. It was an object lesson that won many friends to
the Chicago Plan. This is perhaps the place to say that every improve-
ment in the Chicago Plan has its own intrinsic usefulness; yet, al-
though each single project can stand alone on its own merits, as they
dovetail together to form the whole plan, they represent the best
possible physical development for the city.
418 Public Questions in States and Cities [1924
The two-level Michigan Avenue improvement, separating traffic
automatically by providing separate levels for different classes of
vehicles, cost about $16,000,000. It was completed in 1920 and has
already paid for itself six times over. Not only has it increased traffic
facilities more than 700 per cent and eliminated an annual charge of
$2,000,000 resulting from traffic regulations which were formerly
necessary, but it has also increased surrounding property values
more than $100,000,000. The cost was borne half by the city as a
whole and half by the property in the benefited (specially assessed)
districte niu.
Upon the northern boundary of the loop district, along South Water
Street, there has been ever since the oldest Chicagoan can remember,
a great produce market. So congested has this market been all day
long that not only was a very important east-and-west public street
entirely absorbed by private business, but also every north-and-south
street, connecting the central business district with the north side of
the city, was jammed to such an extent that all moving traffic was
confined to the 20-foot-wide street car right of way in the middle of
the streets. The widening and double-decking of South Water Street
began October 1, 1924. That is to say, the wrecking of buildings to
make way for the new embankment began. This work was, of course,
preceded by years of technical study, by a course of judicious pub-
licity, and by a long case in court for the condemnation of the property
and the acquisition of the land. The new embankment is to be a mile
and a quarter in length, from the intersection with Michigan Avenue
to the bend in the river at Market Street. It is to be a two-level
street all the way, the upper surface for traffic of all classes, and the
lower street for heavy commercial traffic which will have a course
unobstructed by any cross traffic. On January 1, 1925, this new street
will, by city ordinance, be named Wacker Drive, in honor of Chairman
Charles H. Wacker of the Chicago Plan Commission, in recognition
of his distinguished services to the city.
This improvement gives the city two new streets where before it
had none at all; for although South Water Street existed nominally,
in practice it was entirely given over to the produce market, and was a
thoroughfare for market vehicles only. The market is now moving
to a more appropriate location, and the future development of the
upper level of Wacker Drive will be of the very highest type of office
No. 100] State Police Problems 4IQ
buildings, hotels, theaters, etc. On the upper water side of the rro-
foot-wide street will be a promenade with a handsome balustrade and
steps at intervals leading to the lower level, which is to be 135 feet
wide, 25 feet of which is dock space. The lower street will be used
entirely by heavy commercial vehicles. It is wide enough for six
lanes of trucks, three each way, at the same time. The lower level
of Wacker Drive will provide a direct route along the northern edge
of the loop district, unobstructed by any cross traffic, for commercial
vehicles traveling between the boat and railroad terminals east of
Michigan Avenue and the warehouse district on the west side of the
city.
In addition to the very great benefit which the city will derive from
the acquisition of two new streets through its most congested area
(the central business district), the improvement of South Water Street
means even more in the relief of congestion in this city. It is the last
link in the quadrangle of wide streets intended to by-pass through-
bound traffic around the loop.
E. S. Taylor, The Plan of Chicago in 1924 in Annals of the American Academy of
Political and Social Science (Philadelphia, November, 1924), CX VI, 225-228 passim.
—_—_>____—_——_
100. State Police Problems (1926)
BY SUPERINTENDENT LYNN G. ADAMS
With the exception of the Texas Rangers, the Pennsylvania State Police Force
is the oldest organization of its kind in the United States. From the time of its
founding the author has had an active and important part in its work. On the res-
ignation of Major John C. Groom, Captain Adams became major and its second
superintendent. During the World War he had charge of the military police in
Paris. On matters of police work his reputation and authority are great. For
another view of related problems, see No. 109 below. For some account of State
Police work, see Katherine Mayo, The Standard Bearers, Mounted Justice.
OR the purpose of scientific study of crime in the United States
there are very few authentic data available. As an instance, we
have no record of the number of crimes committed in the state of
Pennsylvania; consequently, we cannot form an accurate idea of the
number of criminals that go undetected. Nor is there any effective
420 Public Questions in States and Cities [1926
means of collecting such information. This condition is general
throughout the United States.
Between January 1, 1921, and the present date, the Pennsylvania
State Police have made 480 arrests in homicide cases. In 320 there
is evidence of premeditation. From this fact, I conclude that most of
them believed that they had better than a gambler’s chance to escape
detection, apprehension and conviction. Every theft, robbery, bur-
glary, embezzlement, forgery and swindle is the result of some person
or persons believing that they could evade justice; each had conceived
an idea that justice is not only blind but crippled, probably based upon
their observations of the way our mills of justice have functioned
in the past. Indeed, if I may be facetious, I would say that if you
could see a reproduction of their conception of justice in a statue,
it would probably be mistaken for the “Winged Victory of Samo-
thrace.”’
Frequently in our publications we find articles saying that one thing
or another is responsible for the unsatisfactory condition that exists
as concerns crime. One will say that it is due to the inefficiency of
the police, another that it is the courts’ delays, still another that it is
the economic condition of the country that permits a few to have
much while many have little, or that the solution is a matter of
eugenics, or that politics are responsible.
It is my opinion that conditions are a result of a combination of
weaknesses in all parts of our law enforcement machinery.
There is no reason for me to cite facts or figures to show that we are
having more crime in this country than is desirable. I think we may
all agree that general law enforcement develops far too many failures.
Therefore, I think it is best that I confine myself to stating what, in
my opinion, are the causes for this undesirable condition and suggest
what I consider would be some effective remedies. My opinion may
or may not be correct, and my only excuse for expressing it is that it is
the result of twenty years’ experience in the Pennsylvania State
Police Force, an organization that has handled as many as 120 murder
cases and 11,000 miscellaneous crimes in a single year... .
The law enforcement machinery of the United States is made up
of several more or less independent or disassociated units only co-
ordinated by the fact that none can reach the full purpose for its
being without the co-operation of the others. Each of these units is
No. 100] State Police Problems 421
frequently actuated by influences which are opposed to each other,
and the results are frequently unsatisfactory, or negative.
The units of law enforcement machinery consist of the police, the
magistrate’s court, the prosecuting attorney, grand juries, judges
of the lower courts, petit juries and courts of appeal.
To facilitate the study of the problem of law enforcement, let us
assume that what appears to be a crime has been committed. The
person making the discovery reports the fact to the police—the first
unit of the law enforcement system. The first function of the police
is to investigate for the purpose of determining that a crime has been
committed, and if so, by whom. Its second function is to apprehend
the guilty person and deliver the prisoner and the evidence to the
proper judicial officer for a preliminary hearing. The effectiveness
of the police unit can only be determined by the verdict and only
when the other units of the system have functioned in practice as
they are expected to function in theory.
The police unit in order to do its work effectively must possess cer-
tain qualifications. The first of these is intelligence backed up by
training and experience. Otherwise, it will not be able to grasp the
significance of the various elements of evidence, nor will it be able
to give each element thereof its proper value, nor reach the correct
valuation of the sum of these elements, producing proof.
In this country the method of selection of policemen is without
doubt the least likely to secure the first and most necessary qualifica-
tion. The generally adopted method of selection is political, physical
and mental—at a ratio of one hundred to fifty to one. Nor is there
much being done in the direction of intelligent training of men for
this kind of service. Comparatively recently, some of the larger
cities have started training schools, as have most of the state police
forces in states where such organizations exist. But as a rule, in the
smaller cities, the policeman is appointed, given a uniform, a badge,
a billy and a gun, and then sent out with an older policeman to learn
the limits of his beat.
Methods of organization narrow the field of advancement by promo-
tion to such limits that very few intelligent and ambitious young men
will favorably consider police service as a field for their life’s work.
This defect of organization is also responsible for there being very
few competent executive police officials. JX is remarkable that in a
422 Public Questions in States and Cities [1926
country where the benefits of special training and organization are so
effectively demonstrated in our commercial affairs, that they should
be considered unnecessary in one of our most important public
services.
The matter of apprehending a criminal after detection often requires
not only trained intelligence but also organization and co-operation
of the highest development. With our present-day means of rapid
transit, it is possible for the criminal to place great distances between
himself and the scene of the crime in a very short space of time. With
police forces disconnected, each interested in its own problems, it
is not surprising that frequently a great criminal can remain hidden
and unmolested in the very shadow of a police station. The surprising
thing is that so many are apprehended.
Also charge against the effectiveness of the police unit political
interference with the performance of its duties and a lowering of the
morale which results in taking of bribes and a spiritless performance
of duty.
Taking all of these conditions into consideration, we find the real
reason why the police unit of our law enforcement system must bear
a large share of the responsibility for failure in law enforcement.
Let us suppose for the purpose of this examination of the subject
that in this case of crime, the police have been successful and the case
now passes on to the next unit—the magistrate or justice-of-the-
peace.
It is the function of this unit to determine that the evidence is or
is not sufficiently convincing to justify the arrest and the incarcera-
tion of the accused.
In Pennsylvania, and most of the states, this official is not required
to be learned in the law, nor to have any other qualification than that
he be sufficiently popular to receive a plurality at the polls; and yet
failure on his part to place the proper valuation on the evidence or to
perform some other of his duties may partially or wholly nullify the
activities of the police force, no matter how thoroughly it has per-
formed its work.
Let us assume, however, that the case under consideration has
passed successfully on to the next unit in order—the prosecuting
attorney.
It is here that the indictment is prepared and the evidence mar-
No. 100] State Police Problems 423
shalled in proper order and presented to both the grand and the petit
juries. It is here placed in its proper order on the calendar. It is the
prosecuting attorney who must examine and cross-examine the wit-
nesses. Thus he must uncover errors, exaggerations, omissions,
deceit and prejudice, to develop the facts concerning the case. Here
again we find that a special fitness to perform the work at hand has
little, if anything, to do with selection. A plurality at the polls is all
that is required. Indeed, the office too frequently goes to young and
inexperienced attorneys who have not yet built up a paying practice,
The criminal, if he has sufficient money, can avail himself of the
cleverest legal talent that will devote all of its time to the one case
at hand, while often an inexperienced prosecuting attorney must pre-
pare a large number of cases for each term of court. If he err, the
case may be irrevocably lost, while if the criminal loses he may appeal
and often does receive a new trial. Political expediency may, and all
too frequently does, interfere with the success of the case. It is also
responsible for unnecessary delays which result in minor details being
forgotten by witnesses or the loss of evidence through death or dis-
appearance of witnesses. Thus we find, through lack of ability, over-
work, political expediency and dishonesty, another unit that must
bear its share of the responsibility for failure.
Next in order, our case comes to juries both grand and petit, and
back of the juries is the juror-selection system. In many states, this
consists of the commission that selects names of citizens and places
them in a wheel or other mixing device and then some person who has
been blindfolded draws out a sufficient number to fill the quota
required. Here again, political or other improper motive frequently
enters into the selection of names to be placed in the wheel. A juror
is really a judge whose duty it is to weigh and give a valuation to the
evidence produced by each side. He must frequently compare the
statements of two or more witnesses whose testimony is directly
opposed to each other. He must frequently listen to and weigh the
testimony of experts in highly complicated and technical matters.
In petit juries, one juror in error or prejudiced may upset the whole
case and prevent justice being done. And yet in all my police expe-
rience, I have never known of a court where there was evidence of any
special attempt having been made to choose jurors on account of
intelligence, education or good character.
424 Public Questions in States and Cities [1926
Our case having safely passed the juries and a verdict of “guilty”
having been returned, it now goes to the next unit of the system—
the judge. Here we have an official who in theory is impartial; yet
at varying periods, in most states, he is required to stand for re-elec-
tion and to be the subject of political favors. A dishonest judge may
defeat justice in innumerable ways. He may grant continuances of a
case with all the disastrous results of delay. He may err so that the
defendant may secure a new trial. He may in some cases suspend or
pass inadequate sentences. He may in other instances grant paroles,
and by these devices bring to naught all the efforts that have preceded.
It would naturally be supposed, in the event of conviction and ade-
quate sentence, that justice would stand triumphant. But not so.
It is here that the pardoning power, too frequently acting upon mis-
information often supplied by well-meaning persons of narrow vision,
nullifies all that has been accomplished.
In twenty years of police experience, I have seen justice fail in each
unit that I have mentioned, and in every manner that I have men-
tioned—not once, but many times.
Respect for law is based upon its effectiveness in dispensing im-
partial justice. Except perhaps when modified by religion, man’s
instincts are all on the side of expediency. And most religious persons
are religious on account of expediency; as soon as a thing becomes
inexpedient, it is avoided. There is an abundance of evidence to prove
that effective detection, apprehension, conviction and punishment
does inhibit crime; and inhibition is in the same proportion as the
conviction and punishment. This is Nature’s way of enforcing her
laws. If man’s laws could be made as effective as the law of gravi-
tation, this would be a very law-respecting nation.
One who attempts to criticize should be prepared at least to suggest
what appears to be a remedy.
‘The police unit of our law enforcement system is lacking in intelli-
gence and organization and is hampered by political control. Consoli-
dation, removal of political influence, centralizing control, and special
training are the remedies.
The consolidation of the police system with centralized control
creates a field of service for advancement that would attract intelligent
and ambitious young men into the service. Its removal from politics
would strengthen the morale and discipline.
No. 100] State Police Problems 425
The establishment of training schools would have the same relative
purpose in the police organization that Annapolis Naval Academy
and the Newport Training Station have in the Navy.
Because I have felt that twenty years’ experience in police service
and a study of the systems of the United States and Europe have
given me some authority to express an opinion as to the police system,
I have done so quite freely, but inasmuch as I know so little of the
obstacles, trials and conditions in the other units of law enforcement,
it would be unbecoming as well as foolish for me to attempt to say how
they should be constructed or improved, and therefore I will refrain
from so doing. But I may say that the first and most important step
in the direction of improvement is a thorough study of all of the
parts and the system as a whole, and to that end there should be a
commission created that would have the power and authority to collect
the material for such a study.
The statistics collected by such a commission would not only pro-
vide material for study of the question, but would serve as a measure
of the effectiveness of the various units and prevent many of the evils
that now exist.
Lynn G. Adams, in Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Scient
(Philadelphia, May, 1926) CXXV, 143-147 passim.
CHAPTER XIX — THE COURTS AND THEIR
PLACE IN GOVERNMENT
tor. The Supreme Court Justices (1911)
BY ELBERT F. BALDWIN
Since 1911, Justices have been appointed as follows: McReynolds (1914), Bran-
deis (1916), Taft, as Chief Justice (1921), Sutherland and Butler (1922), Sanford
(1¢23), Stone (1925). Holmes and Van Devanter alone remain of those who com-
posed the Court in 1911.—Bibliography: Charles Warren, The Supreme Court and
Sovereign States (1924), Congress, the Constitution and the Supreme Court (1925).
HE Supreme Court convenes daily at noon, adjourns for lunch
from two to two-thirty, and at half-past four adjourns for the
day. At noon the clerk cries, “The Honorable, the Supreme Court
of the United States.” Every one rises, and the Judges in their black
gowns file in. When the Judges have taken their places behind the
bench, the clerk calls: “Oyez, oyez, oyez! All persons having business
with the Supreme Court of the United States draw near and give their
attention, for the Court is now sitting. God save the United States
and this honorable Court!”
For the first time in nearly two years there are no vacancies. The
Chief Justice enters first, and he is the most impressive-looking of
the company. Edward Douglass White, of Louisiana, is sixty-five
years old. In physical appearance no man in public life, not even
President Taft, better deserves the adjective “ponderous.” But
listen to Mr. White as, later, he speaks to Attorney General Wicker-
sham (who is summing up the Government’s side in the Tobacco
Case), and you will see that the Chief Justice’s voice is like velvet.
Its quality is emphasized, as he bends forward to speak to the counsel
below, by an expressive gesture of the hand raised slightly with the
first two fingers together. Somehow this gesture suggests to your
imagination the man’s fairness. Mr. White is a Democrat, a South-
erner, an ex-Confederate, and a Roman Catholic. After the war he
426
No. ror] The Supreme Court Justices 427
practiced law in Louisiana, then he was elected State Senator, and
afterwards was appointed Associate Justice of the Louisiana Supreme
Court. Twenty years ago he was elected United States Senator, in
1894 he was appointed Associate Justice of the Federal Supreme
Court, and has just been appointed Chief Justice to succeed Chief
Justice Fuller. This action breaks a precedent. No Associate Justice
had ever before been elevated to the Chief Justiceship. The reason
for this has doubtless been the desire to emphasize the post of Associate
Justice as a finality, and to give to its occupant the feeling that no
higher office can be conferred upon him, thus freeing him from any
imaginary temptation to conform his decision to supposed White
House wishes in order to stand well in line for succession—that is,
supposing the Associate Justice to be a combination of weakness and
ambition. ...
The qualifications for office of the new Chief Justice are high. His
distinction as lawyer, judge, statesman, and man is preéminent and
indisputable. Hence the Senate acted immediately on his nomina-
tion, quite as much because of its confidence in him as a candidate
for the highest judicial position as because he was at one time a mem-
ber of that body. When his name was presented to the Senate by the
President, it made an exception of its rule to refer the names of ap-
pointees to committee. It immediately went into executive session,
and in fifteen minutes had taken favorable and unanimous action.
Such a compliment would have silenced the critics of the nomination,
had there been any, of a man whose name, as a synonym of intellectual
integrity and impartiality, may rank with the first dozen names of
members of the Supreme Court since its creation. In addition to
sheer legal caliber, the Chief Justice is perhaps the only man on the
Federal bench who can argue a case in French. Moreover, he has had
an extensive experience in the practice of the Code Napoléon, on
which the civil law of his native State of Louisiana is founded. . . .
All this time the Judges have been filing in, and the name of John
Marshall comes again to mind as one looks upon the tall figure of
John Marshall Harlan, of Kentucky. That poor light and air are not
always fatal to health is proven by this well-preserved man, seventy-
seven years old. Of the sixty-two men who have sat on this bench,
he has been the associate of twenty-six. His service has been not only
twice as long as that of any other member of the present Court: his
428 The Courts and Their Place in Government [ror
term of over thirty-three years has never been exceeded save by Mar-
shall, Story, and Field. Though oldest in years, Justice Harlan seems
the keenest of the Judges to grasp a possible humor in any situation,
as was shown a few days ago during the progress of the Tobacco
Case in his criticisms of the chewing-tobacco market. Judge Harlan’s
academic and law studies were undertaken at those comparatively
little-known institutions Center College and Transylvania University.
He began practicing law at Frankfort, the capital of the State. As
far back as 1858 he was elected County Judge, and the following year
was Whig candidate for Congress. When the war came, as a Unionist
he raised an infantry regiment and served in General Thomas’s di-
vision. After the war Mr. Harlan practiced law in Louisville, and in
1877 was appointed Associate Justice by President Hayes. As usual,
a Republican appointed a Republican.
Enter, after Judge Harlan, Mr. Justice McKenna, of California,
also a Republican. Joseph McKenna is sixty-seven years old, and
was appointed in 1898 by President McKinley. In appearance he
somewhat resembles Senator Cullom, of Illinois, albeit more red-
blooded. Chin whiskers and spare figure make both look like the
typical Brother Jonathan. Judge McKenna has had long service in
judicial and legislative life. He has been in the California Legislature
and in no less than four Congresses. President Harrison made him
a Circuit Judge, and President McKinley made him Attorney-General
and later Associate Justice. The Chief Justice and Mr. Justice Mc-
Kenna are the only Roman Catholics on the bench.
Enter the next in order of appointment, Mr. Justice Holmes, a Re-
publican, of Massachusetts. He was appointed in 1902 by President
Roosevelt. The Holmes face is winsome, whether that of the Auto-
crat of the Breakfast Table or that of his son, the present Associate
Justice. The Holmes mind is notable too, whether that of father or
son. “ Justice Holmes can wear any one out, such is his mental pace
when he gets going,” said a critic to me to-day. Certain it is that his
mind is one of the most remarkable on the bench, a fact specially
appreciated by the Chief Justice, between whom and Justice Holmes
a strong friendship exists. It is a case of “extremes meet,” one man
being from the far South and with a somewhat Southern temperament,
while the other man is a typical Yankee from the far North. Indeed,
Justice Holmes is a capital example of Massachusetts culture and
No. ror] The Supreme Court Justices 429
patriotism. He isa Harvard man of the class of 1861. The same year
he was commissioned first lieutenant of the Twentieth Massachusetts
Volunteer Infantry. At Ball’s Bluff he was shot through the breast,
and at Antietam shot through the neck. He rose through the army
grades, and when the conflict between North and South was over
went through the Harvard Law School, his course having been inter-
rupted by the war. After years of law practice in Boston he was made
a member of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, and finally Chief
Justice of that Court. Despite his gray hair and mustache, his still
youthful countenance (like his father’s at the same age) and his alert
manner give little evidence of his age—sixty-nine years.
Enter the next Judge in order of appointment, William Rufus Day,
of Ohio, appointed in 1903 by President Roosevelt. Justice Day
seems all brain—a brain which was applied with historic result when
he was chairman of the Commission which negotiated the treaty of
peace with Spain. Judge Day is sixty-one years old, and comes from
Canton, Ohio, President McKinley’s home. He was a great friend
of McKinley, who made him his Assistant Secretary of State, later
Secretary of State, and still later appointed him Circuit Judge.
Enter the next Judge in order of appointment, and now we jump
from 1903 to 1909. The Judge is Horace Harmon Lurton, of Ten-
nessee, a Democrat, appointed by President Taft to succeed Justice
Peckham. Judge Lurton is sixty-six years old. Despite his years, he
seems as pertinacious in asking questions of counsel from the bench
as if he were a very young man, and his nasal Yankee voice has in it
little of the soft Southern twang one might expect. He was educated
at Cumberland University, began practicing at Clarksville, Tennessee,
and rose through the judicial grades to be Chief Justice of his State.
President Cleveland appointed him Circuit Judge, and, as we have seen
in the case of the Chief Justice, the fact that a man was a Democrat
proved no bar to his judicial preferment when President Taft became
convinced that, beyond any other, the man was fitted for the place.
As one looks at Mr. Justice Lurton and his next-door neighbor but
one, Mr. Justice Harlan, the story comes to mind of how these two
mien were once mortal enemies. It was half a century ago. Harlan
and Lurton were on opposite sides in the Civil War. Harlan was
Colonel of the Tenth Kentucky Infantry (Unionist) and Lurton was
a private in the Third Kentucky Cavalry (Confederate). At Cum-
430 The Courts and Their Place in Government |rozz
berland River Colonel Harlan tried to train a cannon ball on Lurton
and company, but the Confederates won. At Buffington’s Island,
however, Trooper Lurton was taken prisoner and transferred to John-
son’s Island in Lake Erie, “the best prison in the North,” he says.
The echoes of the Civil War are getting fainter, but the bringing
together of two such men on the same bench revives a memory.
Enter the next Judge in order of appointment, Charles Evans
Hughes, of New York, a Republican, appointed last summer by
President Taft to succeed Justice Brewer. Mr. Hughes is forty-eight
years old. He is the only Judge who wears a full beard, and this,
together with a very virile manner and voice, distinguishes him some-
what from most men. They used to say of one of the Cardinals that
underneath his vestments he would sometimes “kick out,” as he used
to during his years as a soldier. One has a little of that feeling as one
regards the vigorous prosecutor of the insurance companies and the
Progressive Governor of New York, now in judicial robes and judicial
dignity. This has been emphasized within the past few days by
Mr. Justice Hughes’s opinion in the Alonzo Bailey case, an opinion
likely to become historic. In any event, it brilliantly marks the en-
trance of a man who had shown himself a great administrator into
a new field of activity, where he will doubtless show himself a great
judge.
Enter the next Judge in order of appointment, Willis Van De-
vanter, of Wyoming, a Republican, appointed last autumn by Presi-
dent Taft to succeed Justice Moody. Mr. Van Devanter is fifty-one
years old, and is a very human-looking document indeed. He was
born in Indiana, and was educated at De Pauw University and at
the Cincinnati Law School. After some years of practice in Indiana
he removed to Cheyenne, Wyoming. He rose through various grades
to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of his State. Six years
ago President Roosevelt appointed him Circuit Judge. His present
appointment is particularly interesting in view of the Standard Oil
Case, because in the Circuit Court he had already had part in that
case. The question arose whether he could take part in it on the
Supreme Bench. This, however, would not differ in its essential
nature from what occurred in the Nebraska Maximum Freight Rate
Case, when Justice Brewer, of the Supreme Court, sat as Circuit
Judge; his opinion declaring the Nebraska law unconstitutional was
No. ror] The Supreme Court Justices 431
afterward sustained by the Supreme Court in a decision in which
he shared.
Enter the next and final Judge in order of appointment, Joseph
Rucker Lamar, a Democrat, but, despite that, appointed by a Re-
publican President to succeed to the place left vacant by the promo-
tion of Justice White. Mr. Justice Lamar is fifty-three years old. Of
all the Judges, he seems the best worth looking at. Like the other
Southern Judges, Chief Justice White and especially Mr. Justice
Lurton, so the latest addition to the Bench interrupts counsel once
in a while. Mr. Justice Lamar’s voice is singularly resonant, full-
toned, and bell-like in quality. He was born in Georgia and edu-
cated at the University of Georgia. He practiced law at Augusta,
and for a short time was a member of the State Legislature. To his
new position he brings a distinguished record of service on the Su-
preme Court of Georgia... .
The assured tenure of office and the Supreme Court’s authority in
determining what is law, both greater than in England, have always
attracted eminent men to accept membership in the Court. Yet it
is, nevertheless, evidence of American patriotism when men of the
caliber of our Supreme Court Justices are willing to abandon active
work as advocates—work bringing them many times the financial
returns they now receive—and take their places on the Federal Bench.
Of course one may say that no greater honor can come to a man than
to sit on that Bench, and this is true. At the same time it is a pity
that our Government should evince so little appreciation of the finan-
cial sacrifice involved as to pay the Chief Justice of the United States
$13,000 a year, less than is received by a Justice of the Supreme
Court of New York City, while the head of the British Bench receives
no less than fifty thousand dollars.
Elbert F. Baldwin, The Supreme Court Justices in Outlook, January 28, 1911
(New York), XCVII, 156-160 passim.
432 The Courts and Their Place in Government [r923
102. The Federal Judiciary System (1923)
BY PROFESSOR JAMES T. YOUNG
For Young, see No. 91 above. For first-hand information on the changing atti-
tude of the federal courts with respect to particular legislation, see certain sequences
of decisions collected in Felix Frankfurter, Cases under the Interstate Commerce Act;
Herman Oliphant, Cases on Trade Regulation. See also No. ror above, and Nos.
103 and 122 below.
UR American courts are passing through an era of searching
criticism; the stock promoter and the radical agitator, alike,
are dissatisfied with judicial rulings. It is also complained that the
judges’ decisions lag too far behind public opinion, a strong current of
vopular sentiment is demanding a cheaper, quicker, and simpler
method of procedure, and there are sporadic proposals for a recall
which shall place it in the power of the people by majority vote to
oust from office any judge or other official at any time. The judicial
system is about to undergo some revision in order that it may reflect
more accurately and helpfully the business and social development of
our period. The worth-while criticisms of our system may be divided
into two general classes; first, that the judicial process is so slow and
costly as to be a luxury for the rich. There is much truth in this
charge and it applies not only to the Federal courts but to those of
the States as well. England and the Continental countries have far
surpassed us in the admirable simplicity and dispatch of their court
procedure. In America it is not uncommon for a law suit to require
from five to seven years from its inception to its final decision. This
occurs when both sides are willing to expedite the case and where
the question is not such a close one as to require more than one argu-
ment before the final court. When mistakes in procedure occur or
either side interposes delays, or where a re-argument is necessary,
from one to three years additional time may be required, making a
total of from six to ten years of litigation. Numerous instances of
this latter kind are constantly recurring.
Since much of this unfortunate slowness has been due to over-
crowding of the dockets of the courts and to the immense recent growth
of litigation over Federal laws, Congress by the Act of September 14,
1922, created twenty-four additional judgeships and provided for an
No. 102] The Federal Judiciary System 433
annual conference of the senior judges from all the circuits, at which
a report is made covering the number and kind of cases on the docket
in each of the Courts and the need of additional assistance. The
Chief Justice may request the conference judges to assign extra judges
to districts where help is needed. A movement has also been started
to simplify and hasten procedure of the Federal Courts and to give
the Supreme Court power to prescribe forms and rules for all the
Federal Courts. Some of the delays are unavoidable, but much must
be charged to downright slowness. So, for example, in Atherton
Mills v. Johnston, decided by the Supreme Court May 15, 1922,
an injunction was sought to prevent the enforcement of the Child
Labor Law. Johnston filed his complaint April 15, 1919, and by the
time the case was decided, three years and one month later, the
Supreme Court ruled that the child having reached an age in excess
of 14 the case would no longer be considered! On the same day the
Supreme Court handed down a decision that the Act was unconstitu-
tional. l
In Truax v. Corrigan, decided December, 1921, a still more
striking case is presented. Here an employer sought an injunction
to protect his business from an unlawful conspiracy, filing his com-
plaint in 1916. He was denied protection by the State courts and
appealed his case to the United States Supreme Court where it was
decided in his favor in 1922. Although he thus won a legal victory
by his six years’ fight in the courts, his business had meanwhile been
completely destroyed and himself financially ruined.
A much larger increase in judgeships is urgently needed. In some
of the jurisdictions the docket is so overburdened that cases cannot
be called for a year after they are filed. The abuse of “continuances”
is also a serious block to quick procedure. For these both the attor-
neys and courts are responsible. It is now customary even in the
Federal courts for the judge to grant several continuances or post-
ponements on the application of either side, without serious question.
The attorneys, knowing this, make use of it not only to enable them
to conduct other cases but also to delay and harass the opposing party.
In the second place, lawyers and laymen alike agree that the pro-
cedure in most of our courts is needlessly complicated, and inordi-
nately time-consuming. Mr. Taft both as President and as Chief
Justice has showed his acquaintance with these weaknesses and made
434 The Courts and Their Place in Government [1923
a special effort to remedy them. Pursuant to his suggestion, the
Supreme Court revised and simplified the entire method of pleading
and conducting equity suits in all the Federal courts; a similar revision
is contemplated for the ordinary law cases. Most of the needless
complexity in the starting of suits and in the nature of the exact pleas
to be entered has descended to us from English procedure of two
hundred years ago—while in the land of its origin, this same procedure
has long been abandoned for simpler, more convenient forms. In
this respect our Federal courts are far more advanced than those of
the States. The tendency to seize on trivial detail or minute dis-
crepancies in statement or form has been allowed to run riot through
our procedure with appalling cost to the community and to the popu-
lar respect for the courts. Under the continued stimulus of Chief
Justice Taft and the American Bar Association strong efforts are now
being made to divest procedure of its unnecessary formalities and
delays. Nothing could be done which would so effectually rehabili-
tate the judicial system in the trust of the people. In the last analysis
we do not measure the value of our tribunals by the method of their
choice, whether appointed or elected, nor by their qualifications, nor
their salaries, nor by the recall, nor even alone by their erudition and
knowledge of the law—rather do we believe “by their fruits ye shall
know them.” If the courts can give us broad, statesmanlike inter-
pretations of the law through a quick, simple, and cheap method of
procedure, it matters not whether they are appointed nor whether
we can recall them or their decisions. And if on the other hand we
adopt every modern device to make them sympathetic with the
popular will but allow the technicalities of a by-gone age to remain,
encumbering their machinery, their real work is not done.
A third and more serious criticism of our court system is that it
protects the powerful against the weak, and is largely a means of
maintaining and fortifying the interests of the conservative classes
exclusively. This criticism while untrue in many cases has sufficient
basis to require examination. The legal training of the judge from
the time he starts out as a practicing lawyer is such as to attract his
attention to the sacredness of property; his mind is chiefly occupied
with the means of upholding property rights. In examining the his-
torical reasons for our existing law, he is inclined to look with much
greater care upon the past than upon the present growth of the law.
No. 102] The Federal Judiciary System 435
As a result his whole professional education makes him intensely con-
servative unless by temperament his natural instinct favors progres-
sive changes. A profession whose members are trained by long en-
vironment to this view of life must naturally tend to sympathize
with what is, rather than to seek new interpretations of the law in the
interest of less influential classes of the people.
It is no criticism of the judge to say that his education has molded
his habit of mind, since the same is true of any other professional or
business class, yet the fact is a serious weakness in our judicial sys-
tem, and has created a feeling in wide circles that the judiciary is
under the influence of property interests. Such a control if it exists
is not the result of a deeply laid plot or scheme but rather of this
psychological fact of natural reaction against change, caused by the
environment and training of the judge’s mind. This conservative
bias must be changed, not by a change in the appointing power, not
by a recall, nor by any other device which may threaten the inde-
pendence of the judges, but rather by a change in the method of train-
ing men for the bar. Since the judge is first a lawyer, it is the educa-
tion of the lawyer which must be made to include a knowledge of
the causes and nature of social and economic growth. If our law
is to be progressive it must be interpreted by men trained to see the
necessity of legal growth and life. Here again some foreign systems
have developed more rapidly than our own. They have insisted
on giving prospective attorneys and judges a thorough training in
social and economic as well as legal affairs. If the members of our
courts in this country were so educated there would be little reason
for complaint of class partiality. If our judicial system were simpli-
fied, our court procedure curtailed and expedited, and the legal
training of the attorney were made more social in character we should
have a national judiciary second to none.
James T. Young, The New American Government and Its Work (New York,
Macmillan, 1923), 324-328.
436 The Courts and Their Place in Government [1923
103. Five to Four in the Supreme Court (1923)
BY FABIAN FRANKLIN
Franklin has been an editor of the Baltimore News, New York Evening Post, and
The Independent. He discusses a problem that has engaged many of the best legal
minds.
HEN an act of Congress, or of a State Legislature, is invali-
dated by a decision upon which the Supreme Court is nearly
equally divided, there is naturally aroused a considerable amount
of irritation and even resentment. Proposals of various degrees of
merit or plausibility are made from time to time to do away with this
situation. Perhaps the worst of these proposals was that to which
Mr. Roosevelt lent the weight of his name and the impetus of his
popularity, and which was generally referred to as the “recall of
judicial decisions.” The peculiar vice of this scheme was that it was
calculated to destroy the power of the Supreme Court as a defender
of the Constitution at the very times when, of all times, the assertion
of that power was most needed. The greatest danger of enactments
which override the Constitution is precisely when popular feeling is
highly excited in favor of some particular measure that does so. It
is when popular clamor or the ruling sentiment of the moment is most
urgent that Congress is most apt to disregard Constitutional limita-
tions in its eagerness to please the public; and to give that very public
the power to reverse the court’s decision would be, in practical effect,
to reduce the judgment of the court to a nullity in the very cases in
which appeal to that judgment is most vitally needed. To a more
or less distinct apprehension of this we may, I think, ascribe the
failure of the recall-of-decisions idea to make headway in public opin-
ion, in spite of the prestige of its chief sponsor.
A far more plausible proposal is that which has recently gained
much prominence through its advocacy by Senator Borah. This
would not impair the finality of the court’s decision, but would re-
quire, for the invalidation of an act of Congress or of a State Legis-
lature, more than a bare majority of the court; unless as many as
seven of the nine justices agreed in pronouncing it unconstitutional,
the act would stand. For this proposal what looks like a pretty strong
No. 103] Five to Four in the Supreme Court 437
case can be made, and has been made; but I think it will appear,
upon examination, that neither of the two arguments that are urged
in its behalf is sound.
The chief argument by which the proposal is supported is that the
deliberate act of a legislative body is entitled to a certain presumption
of constitutionality; that to overthrow this presumption the infringe-
ment of the Constitution alleged against the act must be clear and
palpable; that an infringement which turns upon considerations so
refined, so doubtful, or so unimportant as to leave nearly half of the
Justices unconvinced cannot be of this character; and that accordingly
the act should not be set aside unless the court is almost unanimous
in pronouncing it invalid.
I think I have put this argument in as strong terms as it is capable
of; and it certainly has an appearance of great force. But let us
examine the matter a little more closely. The Supreme Court is not
a hostile body, eager to invalidate the acts of Congress or of the State
Legislatures; there is not a member of it who takes pleasure in arraying
judicial authority in opposition to legislative power. When five
justices have pronounced an act unconstitutional and four have
refused to do so, each one of the five and each one of the four has
given to the presumption of constitutionality all the weight to which
in his judgment it is entitled. The five adverse judgments have not
been rendered in wantonness, but because to each of five justices the
infringement did seem sufficiently clear, and sufficiently important,
to overthrow that presumption; and likewise the four favorable judg-
ments have been influenced, in a degree which there is no means of
estimating, by this very consideration that a legislative act should
not be invalidated unless the constitutional objection to it is of unmis-
takable force and importance. In a word, the proposal to require
more than a majority vote to pronounce an act unconstitutional rests
on the assumption that the court does not give due weight to considera-
tions which are dictated by ordinary fairness and common sense; an
assumption for which there is no warrant. The more self-evident it
is that the court ought to give due weight to the fact of legislative
action, the more we feel certain that, as a general rule, though of
course with exceptions, it actually does so; and in point of fact the
record of its opinions is full of evidence that such is the case. The
proposal to add to the weight which is actually attached to the pre-
438 The Courts and Their Place in Government [1923
sumption of constitutionality by requiring a seven-to-two vote to
overthrow it is really a proposal to weight the scales against the Con-
stitution; it is a proposal to apply to legislative acts not the natural
presumption which we have been discussing, but something like the
rigorous presumption of innocence which protects a person accused
of crime. But this presumption, it should be remembered, is based
on the maxim that it is better that ninety and nine guilty men should
escape than that one innocent man should suffer; a maxim that we
cannot transfer to the present subject unless we are prepared to say
that it is better that ninety and nine unconstitutional laws should go
into effect than that one constitutional law should be nullified.
The second argument that is urged in behalf of the change rests
on an altogether different ground; it is based not on the inherent
merits of the procedure but on the effect of it upon the standing of the
court in public estimation. The spectacle, we are told, of five-to-four
decisions invalidating legislative acts is calculated to lower the repute
of the Supreme Court and to lessen its authority in the eyes of the
nation. Undoubtedly there is some truth in this; though the way
in which the court has maintained its standing in the country, decade
after decade, in the face of recurrent instances—and important
instances—of such decisions seems to indicate that the damage is not
so serious as might be imagined. But be this as it may, would the
requirement of a seven-to-two vote tend to increase respect for the
court? Would it tend to give the judgments of the court a greater
authority in the public mind? I think that precisely the opposite
would be the case. Every time six out of the nine justices pronounced
a law unconstitutional and the law nevertheless went into effect, the
country would witness a spectacle far more damaging to the court’s
prestige than any that is now presented. For we should be living
under laws which the Supreme Court, by a two-to-one vote, had con-
demned as unconstitutional, and which nevertheless we should, by
habit and practice, necessarily regard as constitutional. If anybody
were claiming that the Supreme Court was infallible the fact of five-to-
four decisions would be absolutely conclusive refutation of the claim;
but no such claim is asserted. We all know that a decision of the court
may be wrong; but we also know that what it has decided is the
final law of the land. But under the seven-to-two plan the final
law of the land may be in direct opposition to the court’s emphatic
No. 104] The Work of a Juvenile Court 439
decision as to its constitutionality. Respect is due some criticisms
of its fallibility; it has survived them and will undoubtedly con-
tinue to survive them. But how long would it survive repeated
exhibitions not of fallibility, which is a necessary attribute of all
things human, but impotence, which is the one failing that a court
of last resort cannot afford to exhibit?
Fabian Franklin, in The Independent, April 14, 1923 (Concord, N. H.) CX, 246-
247.
ae ee
104. The Work of a Juvenile Court (1925)
BY JUDGE BENJAMIN BARR LINDSEY
Lindsey was judge of a special court in Denver, dealing with juvenile and do.
mestic relations problems. He has made both enemies and champions by his
frank advocacy of new approaches to many of the difficulties with which he has
had to deal.
OYS suit my taste best when they are between twelve and
fourteen, though I like them all, regardless of age, and have
several of them daily as an entrée in my human-nature menu.
Some of them steal automobiles, some steal automobile accessories,
others run away from school, still others run away from home. Some
defy the cop just to see what he’ll do about it; some upset some fruit
stand and harvest the reddest of the apples while the owner shrieks
in resounding Neapolitan what Judge Lindsey will do to them when
he gets them into court. On the other hand, I regret to say that some
of them wiggle their fingers at victims who threaten them with my
vengeance; and angry citizens have come many times to my court
bitterly reproaching me that I “stand back of the young rascals.”
For here, even as in the case of flappers and flippers, I am famous as
an “encourager of immorality.”
But I am not an encourager of immorality nor of anti-social conduct
of any sort. What I understand first of all is that I must find means
to keep these boys from repeating their offenses, and that any punish-
ment which fails to get that result is likely to present society with a
dangerous criminal. Reform can come about only through a change
in the boy’s way of thinking. He doesn’t wilfully think wrong; he
440 The Courts and Their Place in Government [1925
does it because the premises of his logic are incorrect. Change that
and you change the boy; for direct, logical, free, and vigorous think-
ing, independent of adult conventions, is a peculiar gift of boyhood.
A boy has a way of thought which is as deadly direct in its logic from
an accepted premise as the path of the bullet from a rifle. If the boy
misses it simply means that the rifle is sighted wrong, that’s all;
there is nothing wrong with the rifle itself.
It is this that makes some of my boy cases almost appallingly
funny; for humor is often nothing but a form of logic so honest and
remorseless that it follows through to the bitter end.
Take, for example, the case of a certain little “Mickey.” Mickey
was one of the most conspicuous instances of original sin that I ever
had to deal with; and in his dealing with society he seemed born
to trouble as the sparks fly upward. His age was eleven; and the
police had long since formed the habit of arresting Mickey on general
principles whenever anything went wrong in the street where he lived.
Sometimes Mickey’s hard little pipe-stem legs would carry him to my
chambers ahead of time when he felt, as he used to say, “Judge, I
dun got in trouble again; en I thought I better git here before de cops
do”; and his squinty blue eyes and his shock of Irish red hair were a
familiar sight in the court house.
It came to pass, therefore, that whenever there was mischief afoot,
and the local cop had gone ahunting, Mickey would run the instant
he spied him; and this he would do even if he was innocent, as some-
times happened. Flight naturally drew suspicion and pursuit, and
Mickey would then be confronted by the difficulty of explaining why
he had run if he “hadn’t done nuthin’.”’
“ Mickey,” I said to him on one occasion, “when you are innocent,
why not stand your ground?”
A pained expression came into his face. “Judge,” he said, “don’t
you know that you can’t tell a cop nothin’? Judge, when a cop is
after yuh, he’s agin yuh; and there’s only one thing t’do—Ditch and
Skidoo. If yuh don’t yuh just naturally gits pinched.”
“But, Mickey,” I protested, “that’s no reason why you should lie
to the cop.”
To my surprise he said, “ Judge, I never lies to the cop.”
“I don’t know what you call it, then,” I said, “when you knocked
the props out from under that fruit stand, and you skedaddled with
No. 104] The Work of a Juvenile Court 44I
the cop after you; and when he caught you you told him you didn’t
do it. Just now you told me you did do it. You told me the truth,
and you lied to the cop.”
Again he put on the air of injured innocence that he could assume
to perfection when he wished, and then came back at me with this:
“Judge, dat ain’t lyin’ to the cop; dat’s stringin’ de cop. For yuh
see, Judge, it’s like dis. Dat guy had pinched me so much when I
hadn’t done nothin’ dat when he pinches me for somethin’ I done I
says I didn’t do it, so as to make up fer one of the times when he says
I done it when I didn’t. Dat’s stringin’ de cop. An’ he’s still got a
lot o’ string comin’ to ’im!”’
I defy anybody to show that Mickey did not there make an effective
appeal to the elemental right of self-defense, or to show that the police-
man had any right to expect the truth from his lips.
The attitude of injustice and revenge on the part of the police—like
the attitude of injustice and revenge on the part of parents, forced
Mickey to seek an avenue of escape. He lied, not because he was a
liar but because he had encountered injustice; also because he was an
ingenuous and independent thinker, not afraid of himself or of his
own judgments, or of a God fashioned for him, like an idol, by some-
body elsé.xi.:\ .
When I first started my work in the Juvenile Court of Denver I
began, to the wrath and consternation of all sensible and sane persons,
including the sheriff, who missed numerous fat fees because of my
peculiarities, to send boys, when I had to send them, to prisons or
State institutions on their own responsibility. Formerly they had
generally been taken to such places handcuffed to an officer, and the
court officials, including the sheriff, were a unit in calling me a crack-
brained fanatic, and in predicting that since it was necessary to
handcuff these boys to an officer to keep them from getting away,
they would obviously fly to the ends of the earth if the handcuffs and
the officer were both omitted. This, said they, was the only thing
that could logically happen... .
The boys didn’t run. The minute the handcuffs and the officers
were out of the way they didn’t feel any desire to run. In fact they
couldn’t be persuaded to run. I gave them their railroad fare, ex-
plained the idea, and they always arrived. They didn’t arrive only
occasionally. They kept it up, in spite of a certain newspaper, which
442 The Courts and Their Place in Government [t925
scolded, threatened, and ridiculed by turns. If a boy didn’t have any
other motive for going through, he would do it in order to put one
over on the newspapers and police and the district attorney’s office,
and show them that they didn’t know what they were talking about.
So far the record is 100 per cent. I’ve never lost one. Four or five
out of all those hundreds did once, at first, run away, but they re-
turned and apologized for their lack of sense and loyalty.
Back in the days when I was beginning my work among juveniles,
I had one boy who was among the first I sent to Golden. . . . Skinny
was always running away from the cops. He had served time in the
reform school, and had been the terror of that institution. He was
the leader of several gangs, and had within him the imagination, the
fire, the courage, and the talents for roguery that, in other walks of
life, made Captains of Industry—the kind whose exploits in millions
are so magnificent that nobody has the heart to put them in jail.
I shall never forget the day when two six-foot policemen, both of
them breathing hard and both of them evidently more or less under
a nervous strain, came into my chambers with the diminutive form of
Skinny between them, each of them with a big hand firmly encircling
his lean little arms. Skinny clearly resented the familiarity, and yet
I think he took a kind of pride in their evident respect for his resource-
fulness.
One of these officers I knew to be very hostile to my methods; and,
as I learned, he had just tipped off a reporter that the Judge was going
to try sending Skinny to Golden alone, and that it was going to result
in a good laugh on the Judge.
ĮI told Skinny flat that I was going to have to send him to Golden.
This brought from him a storm of tears and violent pleadings for “one
more chance.” But as I had given him “one more chance” on former
occasions, I now had to point out that he was at the end of his rope.
I tried in vain to calm him, but he wouldn’t be consoled. And yet
I just had to get hold of him somehow; and make some appeal that
would win him.
I looked into the face of the policeman, who wasn’t taking the
trouble to conceal a sneer; and I looked at the interested and expectant
face of the reporter who was there on the policeman’s tip. And the
thought came to me that I might shell them with their own guns.
“Skinny,” I said, “do you know what this officer has told this
No. 104] The Work of a Juvenile Court 443
reporter? He has told him that there is going to be a good story in
this because Skinny can’t be trusted; and that when I try to send you
to Golden by yourself, and you run away, it will be a fine joke on
the Judge. Now what do you think of that?”
Skinny’s tears dried so fast that I seemed to see them sizzle into
steam; and he turned on the policeman with flashing eyes. “So dat’s
what yuh told de guy, did yuh! Yuh thinks yuh knows a lot; but
yuh don’t know nuthin’ at all.” Then he turned to me. “Judge,
gimme that writ an’ watch me fool dis cop.”
I handed him the writ and some money, and the last I saw of him
he was tearing across the court-house yard, regardless of keep-off-
the-grass signs.
The policeman laughed as he saw him go. “Judge,” he said, “that’s
the Grand Throw Down for you.”
But at Police Headquarters there was another policeman who,
even in those early days, had a faith in my methods which is common
enough among our Denver police now. This man took up the cudgels
in my behalf, and offered the cynic a substantial wager that Skinny
would go through. The bet was made, and the stakes were placed in
the hands of a stake-holder, who in due time called the Industrial
School on the telephone. It appeared that Skinny was there. It
appeared, moreover, that he was following a line of good behavior
which was astounding to those who had had official dealings with him
before.
Months later I made a trip to Golden; and out from a crowd of
boys darted Skinny, his face all smiles, the pinched look gone from it,
and a different expression about the eyes. “Say, Judge,” he shouted
the instant he was within earshot, ‘didn’t we put one over on dat
cop?”
Se is a prosperous Denverite today instead of an inmate of the
penitentiary. He has a happy wife and a thriving family. Occasion-
ally he drops in to watch me deal with other Skinnys; he always votes
for me.
Ben B. Lindsey and Wainwright Evans, The Revolt of Modern Youth (New York,
Boni and Liveright, 1925).
PART VII
THE HUMAN RELATIONS
CHAPTER XX — PROBLEMS OF CRIME
AND MORALS
105. Piety and Playfulness (1922)
BY GLENN FRANK
Glenn Frank, essayist and editor of the Century magazine, was made President
of the University of Wisconsin in 1925. He is also the author of No. 136 below.
Besides the volume from which this extract is taken, he has written Tke Politics
of Industry (1919).
N ever increasing band of moral overseers are agitating for a
playless Sunday—playless in order that it may be pious. These
crusaders are animated by the belief that a perfectly definite line can
be drawn between things sacred and things secular. They purpose to
rid the American Sunday of things secular and make it by force of
law a sacred day. They make their appeal to two powerful elements
of the American population, the uncritically religious element of our
population, from whom any appeal in the name of a more religious
observation of the Sabbath is likely to win support, and organized
laborers, who have long and rightly fought for one day of rest in seven.
The general objective of the crusaders has been stated by their leader.
the Reverend Harry L. Bowlby, as follows: “Our object is to defend
and preserve the Lord’s Day as a day of rest and worship, and to
enunciate and urge one day of rest in seven for all the toiling masses.”
With this general objective all right-thinking Americans are in
heartiest accord. If decent, law-abiding, and essentially Christian
Americans oppose the campaign—and the name of such opponents
444
No. 105] Piety and Playfulness 445
is legion—it is not because they are hostile to the protection of Sunday
as a day of physical and spiritual refreshment and a day of rest for
men and women who toil. It is not because they regard the general
statement of the purpose of the campaign as wrong. It is because the
moment the crusaders pass from a general statement of purpose to
the details of their program, they fly in the face of all the elementary
facts of human nature, perpetrate a travesty upon Christianity, and
attempt to start the United States pell-mell back to the now happily
forgotten witch-burning days when certain of our New England
ancestors confused their own intolerant egotism with the purposes
of God. Regardless of the loftiness of their purpose, they are attempt-
ing to loose forces that will make for a renaissance of the ugliest and
most inhuman aspects of Puritanism.
Propagandists propose the outlawing of every sort of sport on Sun-
day. Baseball must go. Not one turn of the reel must be allowed to
the movie film. The guardians of the Sabbath will not be fooled by
so-called sacred concerts; they do not believe they are sacred. The
Sunday newspaper must come under the ban. All public parks must
be cleared of Sunday ball games. Interstate commerce must halt
on Sunday. Cool waters of the sea must call in vain to anxious
bathers on sweltering Sundays. All Sunday excursions must stop.
The workman of a congested district must not be so sinful as to want
to take his family out of the city for a breath of air and bath of sun-
light on Sunday. Candy-stores must lock their doors on Sundays.
The delicatessen, to which overworked housewives are wont to turn
for their Sunday evening meal, must serve its public in six days a
week. The great army of indoor men who depend upon the Sunday
golf game for ozone and exercise must relegate cleek and brassy to
the attic on Sunday and content themselves with calisthenics. The
tennis-player must put aside his racket on Sunday. The Sunday
schedule of street-cars, subway-cars and steam-trains must be cut to
the irreducible minimum. And children must not study their Monday
lessons on Sunday.
All this the self-appointed guardians of the Sabbath would enforce
by law. Doesn’t all this hark back the least bit to the old Puritan
law, that read:
“This court, taking notice of great abuse and many misdemeanors
committed by divers persons in their many ways, do therefore order
446 Problems of Crime and Morals [1922
that whosoever profane the Lord’s day by doing unnecessary servile
work, by unnecessary travailing, or by sports and recreations, he or
they that so transgress shall forfeit for every such default 4o shillings
or be publickly whipt; but if it clearly appear that sin was proudly
and presumptiously and with a high hand committed, against the
known command and the authoritie of the blessed God, such a person
shall be put to death or grievously punished at the judgment of the
court.”
Those old Puritans never doubted that their personal notions were
infallible interpretations of the “known command and authoritie
of the blessed God.” They had private back stairs access to the in-
finite. It never occurred to them that an intolerant god is the ig-
noblest work of man. We can smile at the assumed infallibility of
our dead ancestors, but when the ghost of their narrow concéptions
of God and life begins to walk again among us, reinforced by the
inevitable efficiency of modern propaganda, it behooves us to realize
that all the humaner conceptions of life we have slowly attained are
menaced.
I am not being carried away by the usual panic over personal
liberty. I realize that almost every advance step toward a better
social organization has been resisted by men who cried that their per-
sonal liberties were being outraged. The fact is that the history
of human progress has been one continued story, without an instalment
missing, of restrictions upon personal liberty. Just as, it may be said
in passing, every real advance towards a more decent administration
of international relations must involve some loss of national sov-
ereignty. The most damning indictment against the present-day
advocates of blue laws is not that they purpose to interfere with the
personal liberty of the citizen. I can think of many interferences with
personal liberty that might prove a blessing to the country. We
might, with no small benefit to the country, experiment with a few
restrictions upon the personal liberty of certain profiteers in the setting
of prices, not to mention the occasional landlord who sees fit to make
hay while the sun shines upon an acute housing situation. If the
crusaders for a saner Sunday proposed restrictions upon the personal
liberty of the citizens that were economically, sociologically, or reli-
giously sound, we might join their ranks.
But their detailed proposals haven’t a leg to stand on. Their
No. 105] Piety and Playfulness 447
program is based upon a false notion of Christianity. It is a glaring
instance of good intentions gone wrong. I want to emphasize these
two fundamental errors of the playless Sunday program, the false no-
tion of rest and the false notion of Christianity. It is upon these two
counts that the blue-laws crusade will be defeated, if defeated at all.
The cry of “personal liberty” will be so much wasted breath. The
truth is that the average American citizen will talk more about and
do less to defend his personal liberty than the citizen of almost any
other free country on the globe. But if the average American fully
realizes that the playless Sunday is not only a bad thing for the na-
tion physically, but that it is essentially un-Christian, he may be im-
mune to the propagandist’s plea. This, I am convinced, is true.
There are two books—books that have been off the press for a long
time—which I fear the crusaders for a playless Sunday have not read
understandingly. They are the dictionary and the New Testament.
I suspect that the advocates of blue laws have read the Old Testament
faithfully, for their program is strangely reminiscent of many severe,
unrealistic, not to say inhuman regulations recorded in the Old Testa-
ment—regulations which Jesus pronounced obsolete when he an-
nounced his more generous régime of justice and love and flung to
the world his gospel of the more abundant life.
I want these crusaders to read the dictionary in order to learn the
elementary fact that rest is not of necessity the calm and repressed
process their program implies. After I have been at my desk for six
days, it is quite possible that a brisk game of tennis on Sunday will
“rest”? me more than the whole day spent in an easy-chair; it is even
possible that a game of tennis early on Sunday morning will clear
my brain and put me in a better mood for service and sermon later in
the forenoon. The advocates of a playless Sunday might suggest
that a long walk would serve the same purpose. But I refuse to see
the subtle spiritual distinction between the slow motion of my legs
while walking and the swifter motion of my legs in a tennis game.
The only chance multiplied thousands of men and women from offices,
stores, and factories have to romp and play and find genuine rest
from their work is in the ball games and tennis games in our parks
on Sunday or in a round of golf. To deny them this would be a
calamity to physical America. Blue laws are the advance agents of
indigestion and flabby muscles. I do not mean that the American
448 Problems of Crime and Morals [1923
Sunday should be turned into a sports carnival. I agree that the man
who chases a dollar for six days of the week and a golf-ball on the
seventh, with never a thought of “God or home or native land,” is
simply an undesirable citizen. I agree that materialistic America
needs to give more time to the things of the mind and spirit. But
that cannot be insured by a return to the cheerless régime of pre-
Christian and Puritan days. The Puritan Sabbath was not a day of
rest. I will venture the guess that the old Puritans were more tired
on Monday morning than upon any other morning of the week.
Glenn Frank, An American Looks at His World (Newark, University of Delaware
Press, 1923), 124-131.
el Ml
106. Prohibition (1923)
BY PRESIDENT EMERITUS CHARLES W. ELIOT
Dr. Eliot, President of Harvard University from 1869 to 1909, was one of the
great leaders of American thought. He did much to improve educational methods
and standards in both colleges and secondary schools, and was notable for his in-
telligent faith in the American character. For other matter by the same author see
Nos. 141 and 206 below.—Bibliography: Howard Lee McBain, Prohibition, Legal
and Illegal.
REMEMBER well that, twenty years ago or thereabouts,
I was entertained by the Harvard Club of Louisiana at a
large dinner in the city of New Orleans, where I sat next to a
gentleman who was generally recognized in New Orleans as the
leader of their Bar. I noticed the moment we sat down that there
was an extraordinary variety of things to drink on the table; and I
also noticed that my neighbor took everything that was passed and
in large quantity, so much so that I began to be a little anxious about
his condition later. But suddenly he turned to me and said, “Mr.
President, do you know that the New Orleans Bar, and I as its leader,
are going in for complete prohibition in the State of Louisiana?”
I could not help expressing surprise that ke was going in for that
Whereupon he said, “Well, you don’t suppose that we, the members
of the Bar, expect to have the law applied to us, do you?” (Laughter)
He was positively a vigorous advocate of complete prohibition for
No. 106] Prohibition 449
Louisiana, but all the time had not the slightest notion that a pro-
hibitory law could be applied to him or any of his friends, or would be.
That opened my eyes somewhat in regard to the expectation with
which the sudden, unanimous support of prohibition came to pass
in the Southern States. It was nearly unanimous, you remember,
and remains so to this day. The Southern States are the strongest
supporters in this country of prohibitory legislation.
Then, some time later, I found myself attending a Harvard Club
dinner in the State of Missouri. There were many things to drink
at that dinner also. I was informed that some of the leading citizens
of Missouri, engaged in manufacturing operations, were going to
move their plants over into the State of Kansas. I observed later
that a large number of Missouri manufacturers did move their plants
over into the State of Kansas, and learned, on inquiry, that those
manufacturers had made up their minds that they could conduct their
businesses much better in a State where a prohibitory law existed than
they could in a State where the law did not exist.
I have had the delight of passing my summers for more than forty
years—yes, it is fifty-two years since I first began to go to Mount
Desert in summer—in the State of Maine. There I observed that the
prohibitory law in Maine was not observed at all excepting in com-
munities where, as one guest has said to-night, the great majority
of the population was in favor of prohibition. There alone was the
distribution of alcoholic drinks restrained. I lived there fifty summers,
observing the fact that the prohibitory law in Maine was not generally
enforced; observing that the summer residents of the State of Maine,
who, as you know, live all along the shore and in several of the beautiful
lake regions, paid no attention to the prohibitory law.
What inference did I draw from that experience? Simply that un-
less the strong majority of any government unit in the States where
prohibitory laws exist was in favor of prohibition, the law would, as a
matter of fact, not be enforced.
But further: It was obvious that no single State could possibly
enforce prohibition, because it had no power to prevent the manu-
facture of alcoholic drinks outside the State or their importation into
it. You must have national prohibition to make prohibition effective.
It must be nation-wide, or it simply cannot be enforced.
So I supported for many years in Massachusetts, not prohibition,
450 Problems of Crime and Morals [1923
but local option; but then I learned that the sale of distilled liquors in
saloons licensed to sell light wines and beer cannot be prevented.
Nobody should advocate the repeal of the Volstead Act except those
who believe in the unrestricted sale of alcoholic beverages. I ought
perhaps to say that I took wine or beer when I was in the society of
people who were using them. I never had any habit of drinking them
at home; but I always took them when I was in the company of
men or women who were using them. I had no feeling that alcohol
was bad for everybody, or bad for me. I never knew alcohol to do me
any harm; but then I never drank distilled liquors at all. When the
United States in the spring of 1917 went to war, you remember that
with the support of all the best civilian authorities and of the officers
in the Army and Navy, our Government enacted a prohibitory law
for the regions surrounding the camps and barracks where the National
Army was being assembled. The Act proved to be effective and highly
beneficent.
Then I said to myself, “Tf that is the action of my Government to
protect our soldiers and sailors preparing to go to war, I think it is
time for me to abstain from alcoholic drinks altogether.” It is only
since 1917 that I have been a total abstainer; but that is now six years
ago, and I want to testify here, now, that by adopting total abstinence,
after having had the opposite habit for over seventy years, one loses
no joys that are worth having, and there is no joy-killing about it.
On the contrary, I enjoy social life and working life more since I
ceased to take any alcohol than I did before.
That talk, gentlemen, about joy-killing and pleasure-losing, and
so forth, is absolute nonsense for a man who has any sense himself. . . .
We all know that our Puritan ancestors and our Pilgrim ancestors
were not persons who cultivated the finer joys of life. They left be-
hind them the great architecture of England, and its parks and its
music. The Pilgrims came over from Holland, having lived there
for ten or fifteen years in sight of all the glorious Dutch paintings,
sculpture, and architecture. They abandoned all those things, and
settled in the wilderness, where there was little possibility of culti-
vating the love of beauty and little power, too, of resisting the theo-
logical dogmas they had imbibed, which taught that human nature
was utterly depraved, and that most of the human race were bound
for a fiery hell.
No. 106] Prohibition A5I
Those are the people from whom the leading thinkers and doers
of America sprang; and it is naturally inevitable that we, their de-
scendants, should lack the love of beauty in nature and in art, and
even in music. We do lack it. The Pilgrims and the Puritans lacked
it to an extraordinary degree.
Where did they find their pleasures? Largely in drink. They
drank hard at weddings, funerals, and all public festivals. We have
that inheritance, but can we not resist and overcome it? Can we not
grow up into a love of beauty in nature and in art? Can we not cul-
tivate in ourselves the delight in music—in singing and in playing
instruments? We are not hopeless in those respects; and those are
the things we have got to learn to love, in order to escape from this
wretched evil of alcoholism.
But how shall we do it? We must cultivate in ourselves the finer
inspirations, the purer delights, and the greater joys in art and in
work. But, more than that, we have got to practise resistance to
acknowledged manifest evils in our common life.
That has always been my way of living, from day to day, in the
practice of my profession. From the beginning, that was the way I
lived. I attacked what seemed to me a plain, acknowledged, mani-
fest evil, and advocated the best remedy I knew for that evil. That
is just what we have got to do to-day, gentlemen, about this abom-
inable evil of alcoholism associated with venereal disease; because
that evil will kill us unless we kill it. By “us” I mean the white
race, and particularly the American stock. Must we not accept the
proposition that we must either destroy alcoholism and venereal
disease, or those evils will destroy us? I believe that to be the plain
truth; and I want to call on every lover of his kindred and of his
country, hourly, daily, year after year, to contend against these evils,
alcoholism and venereal disease, until they are obliterated from the
world. Finally, may we not reasonably distrust the legal view that
has been repeatedly presented here this evening, namely, that the
rights and privileges of decent and vigorous people should not be
abridged for the sake of indecent or weak people who abuse their
privileges?
Charles W. Eliot, address before The Economic Club of Boston, March 6, 1923,
in A Late Harvest (Boston, Atlantic Monthly Press, 1924), 261-267 passim. Copy
tight by Charles W. Eliot; reprinted by permission.
452 Problems of Crime and Morals [1924
107. Legislating Morals (1924)
BY CLARENCE S. DARROW
This is an extract from an article opposing the national prohibition legislation,
written by one of the most widely known members of the bar. Mr. Darrow has
interested himself in a variety of liberal causes and has appeared in numerous fa-
mous cases, many of them concerned with matters of social importance or humanita-
rian interests. He is a professed agnostic. This article is to be contrasted with No.
106 above.—Bibliography as in No. 106. American Year Book, Vols. 1925-1929
HE English criminal code is filled with examples of the
process of getting rid of legislation by disuse. Up to the
beginning of the last century more than two hundred offenses were
punishable by death in England, including loitering and loafing,
petty larceny and poaching. The scaffold had its thousands of vic-
tims, but crime increased. Finally juries refused to convict, judges
found excuses, the laws became dead letters, and eventually they
passed into the rubbish heap. They were repealed in the end be-
cause they encumbered the books and no longer had any vital force.
The humanizing of the English penal code came from the fact that
juries would not convict. They were too humane and decent to obey
the laws.
The history of the past is carried into the present. All our codes
are filled with obsolete laws. The Fugitive Slave Law was never
obeyed in the North; it took more than a law to compel a humane
white man to send a black man back to slavery. The Sunday laws
today in many states of the Union forbid the publication of news-
papers, the running of trains and street cars, riding and driving for
pleasure, attending moving picture shows, playing any game, the
starting out of boats on voyages, or doing of any work except works
of necessity. Nearly all these laws are dead, though they still remain
on the books. They are dead because they do not fit the age. They
are not now a part of the customs, habits and mores of the people.
They could not be enforced.
After the Civil War the Constitution was amended to abolish slav-
ery and provide equality between whites and blacks. Congress and
most of the Northern States thereupon passed explicit legislation for-
bidding any discrimination between the races in public places, such
No. 107] Legislating Morals 453
as hotels, theatres, railroad trains, street cars, restaurants and the
like. But these laws, as everyone knows, are now openly ignored.
The Negro does not go to the good hotels; he does not have good
seats in the theatre; he does not enter the best restaurants; is not
permitted to mingle with the whites, or to get what the whites believe
belongs exclusively to them. This is not only true in the South; it is
rapidly becoming a fact in the North. Custom and habit override
the law because of the deep prejudice of the white against social
equality with the black. Any effort to enforce these laws would
bring serious consequences either North or South, and would no
doubt injure the condition and standing of the black man, which can
only be improved by a long process of education and growth. It
cannot come from passing laws. All sorts of gambling is forbidden
by the statutes of the various States. This includes betting and
playing cards for money or prizes; it includes raffles even at church
fairs. Yet most Americans gamble in some way or other—and are
not prosecuted.
The Anti-Trust Act is a notorious example of legislation that is
not enforced and cannot be enforced. Only a few prosecutions have
ever been brought under it, and even when a prosecution has been
successful ample means have been found to accomplish the desired
ends in spite of the law. It has never kept Big Business from organ-
izing and combining. It never can or should. Nevertheless, Big
Business, through complaisant law officers and courts, has been able
to enforce it against organizations of workingmen that engage in
strikes. This is done in spite of the fact that it was passed in the
interest of workmen and consumers and to control Big Business.
No one who has property believes in the tax laws. No one obeys
them or pretends to obey them. When speaking of these laws no one
shouts from the housetops the silly doctrine that a law must be en-
forced because it is on the books. No one even quotes the foolish
statement of General Grant that the “best way to repeal a bad law
is to enforce it.” No doubt Grant was a good soldier, but he was
never suspected of being a philosopher or an historian. The way to get
rid of a bad law, which means a law obnoxious to large masses of peo-
ple, is not by trying to keep it alive, but by letting it die a natural
death. This is the way that society has always followed in dealing
with unjust laws. The tax laws are a part of our civil and criminal
454 Problems of Crime and Morals [1924
codes, yet those who shout the loudest for enforcing Prohibition
never pretend to obey them. When a man argues that a law must be
enforced so long as it is a law, or that the best way to repeal a bad
law is to enforce it, he is talking about some law he wants enforced
and not about a law that he believes is tyrannical and unjust. . . .
It is much easier to pass a law than to repeal an old one. Legisla-
tion which represents special interests or is demanded by organized
associations which make a great show of power before law-making
bodies is seldom met by strong opposition. The force which demands
the law is active and persistent; its insistence leads politicians to be-
lieve that a large mass of men is behind it. But when the statute
goes into effect it may create serious oppression and violent dis-
order; it may come into conflict with the desires and prejudices of
the majority of the people affected by it. But, once it is on the
books, an active minority can easily prevent its repeal. It is only
by the steady resistance of the people that it is eventually de-
stroyed.
In spite of the common opinion, this method has always been the
ruling one in getting rid of bad laws. It is Nature’s way of letting the
old die by opposition, neglect and disuse. If it were not in operation
there could be no real progress in the law. If history were not replete
with illustrations, if philosophy did not plainly show that this must
be the method of society’s growth, it would be easier to understand
the people who so glibly argue that, whatever the cruelty of the hard-
ship, the law must be enforced while it is on the books. A law cannot
be taken off the books while it is complacently obeyed. Constant
protest is the only manner that history offers the common people
of having their way in the making and administration of the law.
All this, of course, does not mean that all laws are or should be
habitually violated. The larger part of our criminal code represents
the ideas of right and wrong of nearly all our people. But the sump-
tuary laws that regulate individual conduct and custom are never
believed in by the great mass of the people. Men, unfortunately,
are in the habit of being influenced by aphorisms and catchwords.
We continually hear of “Law and Order,” as if they always went
together and law came first. As a matter of fact, order is the mother
of law, and the law which seriously overturns habits and customs does
not promote order, but interferes with it instead. The enforcement
No. 107] Legislating Morals 455
of an unpopular law by drastic threats, by increasing penalties, by
more cruelty, is not the administration of justice; it is tyranny under
the form of law. ...
A great part of the misconception about the power of law comes from
the assumption that the social group is held together by law. As a
matter of fact, the group came into being long before the statutes. It
formed itself automatically under the law of the survival of the fittest.
The group is always changing in accordance with this natural law.
Even statutes and courts are powerless when they stand in its
WAY ds. sls
All laws are made, altered and amended in the same way. Whena
large class does not respect them, but believes them to be tyrannical,
unjust or oppressive, they cannot be enforced. It is a popular idea
that the majority should rule. But this does not mean that the people
should vote on every question affecting human life, and that the
majority should then pass penal statutes to make the rest conform.
No society can hold together that does not have a broad toleration
for minorities. To enforce the obedience of minorities by criminal
statute because a mere majority is found to have certain views is
tyranny and must result in endless disorder and suffering.
When the advocates of Prohibition urge that all laws must be en-
forced, they really refer to the Prohibition laws. They do not refer
to the numerous other laws in every State in the Union that have
never been enforced. Even the drastic Volstead Act has not prevented
and cannot prevent the use of alcoholic beverages. The acreage of
grapes has rapidly increased since it was passed and the price gone
up with the demand. The government is afraid to interfere with the
farmer’s cider. The fruit grower is making money. The dandelion
is now the national flower. Everyone who wants alcoholic beverages
is fast learning how to make them at home. In the old days the
housewife’s education was not complete unless she had learned how
to brew. She lost the art because it became cheaper to buy beer.
She has lost the art of making bread in the same way, for she can buy
bread at the store. But she can learn to make bread again, for she has
already learned to brew. It is evident that no law can now be passed
to prevent her. Even should Congress pass such a law, it would be
impossible to find enough Prohibition agents to enforce it, or to get
the taxes to pay them. The folly of the attempt must soon convince
450 Problems of Crime and Morals [1925
even the more intelligent Prohibitionists that all this legislation is
both a tragedy and a hoax.
A wise ruler studies the customs and habits of his people and tries
to fit laws and institutions to their folkways, knowing perfectly well
that any other method will cause violence and evil; he knows that
fitting laws to men is like fitting clothes to men. The man comes
first and both the laws and the clothes should be fitted to him. In-
stead of increasing penalties, stimulating cruelty, and redoubling
the search for violators, he should take a lesson from Trajan, the
Roman Emperor, as shown by his correspondence with Pliny. About
the year 112, when the campaign against the Christians was in full
sway in the Empire Pliny, who was the governor of a province, wrote
to Trajan for instructions as to how to carry on the prosecutions. The
Emperor replied: “ Do not go out of your way to look for them.”
Clarence S. Darrow, The Ordeal of Prohibition, in The American Mercury (New
York, 1924), II, 423-427 passim. Reprinted by permission of the author.
108. Criminal Syndicalism (1925)
BY WILLIAM SEAGLE
Seagle is a New York lawyer. For related matters see Nos. 173 and 194 below.—
Bibliography: Z. Chafee, Jr., Freedom of Speech, The Inquiring Mind; Walter Lip-
mann, Liberty and the News; J. G. Brooks, American Syndicalism: The I. W. W.;
Victor L. Berger, Testimony at His Trial in Illinois; Morris Hillquit, Socialism in
the United States.
HE Criminal Syndicalism statutes in general all have a
common design, with clauses as standardized as those of
fire and life insurance policies. They forbid the advocacy of the duty,
necessity, or propriety of committing sabotage or other violence as
a means of accomplishing changes in industrial ownership or control,
or of effecting political change. To attempt to justify criminal syn-
dicalism or to publish matter advocating or justifying the same is
also verboten. The criminal anarchy laws make it unlawful to preach
the doctrine that organized government should be overthrown by
force and violence. Besides, mere membership in a syndicalist or
anarchistic organization is usually made criminal, and any two per-
No. 108] Criminal Syndicalism 457
sons who unite to urge such doctrines are declared to be conspirators.
A meeting-house used by them acquires the legal status of a house of
ill-fame: to let a hall to them is prohibited.
Some special features are provided in several of the States out of
an abundance of caution. For example:
1. In Massachusetts, where the act in general is mild, it is curiously specific to
the effect that the accused may be arrested without a warrant.
2. The Washington act, without providing for immunity, declares that no wit-
ness in a sedition case may refuse to testify on the conventional ground that his
evidence may incriminate him.
3. The Colorado act imposes the penalty of first degree murder for any death
that is the result of its violation; thus, a speaker who makes a speech which is
held to be seditious may receive the death penalty if a fatal riot occurs afterward.
4. The Kentucky act states as a matter of law what is elsewhere the usual rule
in practice—that “in any prosecution under this act it shall not be necessary to
prove any overt act on the part of the accused.” ...
In general, the penalties provided are extremely savage, running on
the average to ten years. In six States, Colorado, Iowa, Louisiana,
Montana, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, a sentence of twenty years
may be imposed; in Kentucky, twenty-one years, and in South Dakota
no less than =wenty-five years. The timid law-makers seem to forget
that homicide and the destruction of property are already punishable
under the ordinary criminal law, and that what they make malum
prohibitum is simply excitable or prophetic language. . . . Perhaps,
the solons of Connecticut deserve the prize for the law which outlaws
all persons who “before any assemblage of ten or more persons ad-
vocate in any language any measure, doctrine, proposal or propaganda
intended to injuriously affect the government of the United States or
the State of Connecticut.”
Turn now to New Hampshire, a near neighbor to Connecticut.
It not only has no criminal syndicalism or sedition laws, but its con-
stitution, like that of Maryland, specifically recognizes the right of
revolution, as witness:
The doctrine of non-resistance against arbitrary power and oppression is absurd,
slavish and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind.
Thus in Connecticut it is a high crime to read before ten citizens
the constitution of New Hampshire! . . .
Ten State Supreme Courts have formally sustained and approved
these idiotic statutes. The anarchy and sedition laws have been
458 Problems of Crime and Morals [1925
held valid in New York, Pennsylvania, and Illinois, and the criminal
syndicalist acts in Idaho, Minnesota, Oregon, Washington, Michigan,
Kansas, and California. Beside, the Connecticut courts, for all prac-
tical purposes, may be said to have approved its sedition law when
they decided that even if it was unconstitutional an alien could not
plead its infirmity. In order to shut out aliens from the right to
liberty as “persons” under the Fourteenth Amendment, the Con-
necticut Dogberries exhumed a case of pre-Civil War vintage in which
it was held that slaves were not freed by coming upon free soil of
the State: a...
There has been developed in California a convicting machine with
an almost ideal technique. Indeed, it is practically flawless. While
all good Californians, including judges, know that all wobblies [mem-
bers of the Industrial Workers of the World] are criminals per se,
the ancient forms of the Common Law relating to evidence unfor-
tunately require that in every prosecution the alleged criminal charac-
ter of the organization to which the accused belongs must be estab-
lished by competent testimony. In other words, one not a wobbly
cannot testify as to the nature and purposes of the I. W. W. with-
out violating the hearsay rule. The difficulty appears formidable,
but it has been met in a formidable manner. The State of California
at great expense ($250 a day and expenses!) has hired three patriotic
men, all former members of the I. W. W., to be professional witnesses.
One of them has admitted in court that he was once convicted of
theft, arson, and perjury. Another, affectionately known as Three-
Fingered Jack, has served a sentence for the rape of a twelve-year-
old girl. The third has confessed that he has deserted from the
Army and Navy eleven times. Court records, moreover, show that
he has been confined in a government insane asylum. He once ad-
mitted on the witness stand that he had never told the truth before
in his life. He has appeared as an “expert” against the I. W. W.
nine times, testifying to his harrowing experiences while a member.
Naturally enough, an I. W. W., confronted by such professionals,
seeks “expert” testimony himself to prove that his organization is
innocent. But this is simply jumping out of the frying pan into the
fire. For example, consider the case of two I. W. W.’s who went
on trial for criminal syndicalism in Sacramento county in April, 1922.
Ten witnesses, fellow I. W. W.’s were put on the stand by the heedless
No. 108] Criminal Syndicalism 459
defence to prove that the I. W. W. organization did not advocate
force and violence. There ensued a very droll episode. On the spot
the ten I. W. W. witnesses were arrested, and the admission of mem-
bership which they had made on the stand was the offence with which
they were charged! After two juries had disagreed, all ten were con-
victed of criminal syndicalism in January, 1923, and got from one
to fourteen years at San Quentin! ...
. . . But the readiest weapon for dealing with radical meetings
comes from the licensing power of municipalities. The Constitution
guarantees the right of free speech, but where is the citizen to exercise
that right? The public streets, squares, and parks of a democracy
would occur to most men as suitable places. But a joker lies in the
fact that the State is held to have full control over all public places,
and may therefore forbid their use in its discretion. The law requires
a license to be obtained, usually from the mayor, before a meeting may
be held in the streets or parks. The mayors of the United States
early awoke to the use which they could make of this licensing power
to curb laborites and radicals, and it is only to such scoundrels tkat
licenses are refused. Since it is practically impossible to prove an
abuse of discretion, little relief can be had from the courts. .
In many American cities the police have even forbidden meetings
in private halls, and labor unions have been prevented from holding
their regular business meetings in their own quarters.... The
proprietors of halls are given to understand that if they insist on hiring
them to dangerous citizens the police will get after them. The multi-
tudinous regulations of the fire and health and tenement-house codes
are discreetly mentioned, and it is hinted to the proprietors that
if they insist they will one day find themselves with their licenses
revoked upon some technicality. It is practically impossible to secure
judicial review in such cases.
A lawyer can no longer advise a client as to his rights merely upon
the basis of the law upon the books. He has to acquaint himself also
with constabulary jurisprudence. The rules are frequently couched
in very unjudicial language. Thus, the police commonly assume
that a speaker who addresses a meeting in a foreign language means
no good; as a jurist might put it, such a meeting is only conditionally
privileged. In many places, the police regard the possession of such
papers as the New Republic or the Nation as prima facie evidence of
460 Problems of Crime and Morals [1926
criminal intent. They also have their own sedition law, which forbids
making speeches that are “too radical.” They hold that it is criminal
in all cases to resist arrest, and that all meetings are criminal which
are likely to be disturbed.
It will perhaps have been noticed that I have been able to muster
but little eloquence on the subject of the Constitution. The truth
is that we are rapidly approaching, if we have not already reached,
the bankruptcy of constitutionalism. The doctrine of fundamental
and inalienable rights, after a century and a half, is in rapid decay.
The cream of the jest is that, as the old rights come more and more
flagrantly to be violated, precisely those States where they are most
at a discount hasten forward with statutes making instruction in the
Constitution compulsory in the public schools.
William Seagle, in The American Mercury (New York, 1926), VII, 36-42 passim.
Reprinted by permission of the author.
——————
10g. Politics and Crime (1926)
BY PROFESSOR RAYMOND MOLEY
Moley is Associate Professor of Government at Columbia University. He has
written many books on political and sociological subjects.—For additional infor-
mation on crime in its political aspects, see No. roo above.
HE startling crime rate in the United States is probably due to
the defects in the administration of justice. Certainly it seems
unlikely that any of the current popular guesses as to the causes of our
regrettable situation, such as “the aftermath of the war,” the high tide
of immigration, or the effects of the Volstead Act, are to be seriously
credited. And wherein the administration of justice fails to work
smoothly, it fails because it is compelled to operate under the handicap
of politics. From arrest to conviction, from sentence to release,
political influences are present, and wherever they are present they
are pernicious. .. .
A judiciary composed of strong independent personalities with
fine standards of propriety and a sense of responsibility not only for
what happens in the court room, but for other related segments of the
No. 109] Politics and Crime 461
process of justice, could do much to restore the prestige of the ad-
ministration of justice in every state. But such leadership, except
in scattered instances, is impossible when the judiciary is so exposed
to political influences. Judges must get elected, and so conduct them-
selves as to attain re-election. The term, in an overwhelming number
of states, is six years or less, a period not long enough to permit even
the newly elected judge to forget the necessity of building his following
for the next election. A distinguished member of the Bar, who had
served a term on a state supreme court, said this in private conversa-
tion:
I could not bring myself to run for re-election. It meant constant
breaking in upon the time which a judge, sensitive to the quality of his
written opinions, should give to study. It meant traveling from town
to town, climbing stairways to the offices of professionally unworthy
but politically powerful lawyers. It meant accepting invitations
to attend meetings of every sort, to speak on topics representing every
kind of irrelevance. It meant accepting familiarities from the un-
worthy without flinching, rejecting improper requests without ad-
ministering the rebuke which they deserved. It was a hard choice,
for I wanted the office, but the price was more than I could pay.
Tf this is the verdict when the office is so far removed from political
influences as is the state’s highest court, what must be the humilia-
tion which our political system visits upon the judges of county and
municipal courts! .
Next in importance to the Bench, in the enforcement of law, is
the prosecutor. The discretionary powers of this office are so great
that pressure for favors of various kinds is continuous, and often
politically irresistible. The possibility of building political influence
through the use of this office is so tempting that it becomes the very
keystone of the county ring in most of the three thousand counties in
American states. In large cities, the assistant prosecutors are often
chosen with a view not to specialization in the types of cases tried,
but with reference to the nationalities most common in the city. Thus,
the Italians, if numerous, are represented by a member of their race
who meets with those fellow-nationals who find their way into the toils
of the law, or who, perhaps, are concerned with someone else who has
been so unfortunate. Favors, or promises of favors, constitute a
tremendous source of political power. The political leaders of that
462 Problems of Crime and Morals [1926
nationality operate through this representative, and each finds the
other useful, while both contribute to the power of the machine.
The prosecutor’s office has become, moreover, a place where careers
are started. This is especially true in rural communities. The prosecu-
tor is young. According to the Missouri Survey of Criminal Justice,
just reaching completion, the median age of prosecutors in that state
is from twenty-five to twenty-nine years; the median number of
years of experience is from one to four. Thus the prosecutor’s office is
the first step in a political career. . .
One of the results of the political nature of this office is the tendency
of prosecutors to give undue attention to spectacular cases, to the
neglect of that much larger class of cases, important in themselves
but not likely to attract widespread attention. This means that
while the prosecutor may devote tremendous energy to securing the
conviction of a few notorious criminals, he is likely to permit a large
proportion of cases to go to trial with only indifferent prepara-
tion. =f s
The discretionary power of the prosecutor has been mentioned.
This means, in most jurisdictions, that he may refuse to permit a case
to proceed from arrest to the first hearing by refusing to issue a war-
rant. In the Missouri Survey already cited, it was found that, in the
city of St. Louis over a considerable period of time, the prosecutor re-
fused 972 out of 2464 applications for warrants. This is only the
beginning of the exercise of discretion. Most cases are disposed of
before trial by a “‘nolle pros”; which is in fact decided upon by the
prosecutor, by dismissal in the preliminary hearing, or by a “no bil)”
by the grand jury. The prosecutor dominates the grand jury, and
often quite effectively influences the decision in the preliminary hear-
ing. In both of these instances he may actually dispose of the case
without formally assuming responsibility. His power over the
criminal case is practically decisive. He is, then, politically the key
to the whole process of law enforcement... .
Everyone is familiar with the politics of police departments. It
found a new and picturesque expression during General Butler’s
tenure in Philadelphia. Another chief of a very large city said in
confidence: “I couldn’t last ten days if I permitted my force to attack
erime as they really could attack it.” It is possible that this chief
was overstating the case, but his statement would meet with agree-
No. 109] Politics and Crime 463
ment by chiefs in other cities. One city had an “unofficial” chief
who managed appointments, assignments and promotions. He
brought about some raids and prevented others. The official chief
knew of his operations and resented them, but was powerless to prevent
them. A commissioner in one of the few cities in the United States
which still remains under state control, said: “How am I going to
avoid politics in the police department? Iam in politics.” ...
We have already indicated that politics is not always based upon
political party divisions. It may be most deeply rooted in religious,
racial or some other interest in the community. . . . Another form
of “pull” was shown in New York during the last months of the
Hylan administration. An actress appearing at two theatres was for
several nights transported from one to the other with a police escort.
The accounts of eyewitnesses claimed a speed for her limousine of
fifty miles an hour. Traffic was held for her, and thus, with the aid
of the police, she secured all of the advertising that the “White Way”
could afford.
Thus the whole process of justice from arrest to pardon is colored,
if not dominated, by political influences. These influences are not
entirely party influences; they represent in large part those political
forces which are less responsible, such as the newspaper press, eco-
nomic interests, immigrant groups and others.
There are other general relationships between politics and crime
which present a more immediate problem. One of these is the effect
of the rising tide of liquor. In December of last year, there were con-
victed at one time in a Federal district court a score of defendants
on a charge of conspiracy. Among them were a number of prominent
politicians of St. Louis and of Cincinnati. There were office-holders,
including the Harding appointee to the Internal Revenue Collector-
ship in St. Louis. The act out of which the charges grew was the steal-
ing of liquor from a warehouse, to the value of nearly a million dol-
lars, and the use of the liquor in bootlegging. The drag net of the
Department of Justice caught the entire group, from the “higher
aps” to those who had actually performed the criminal acts. The
personnel of the group thus captured is a very interesting example of
the operation of criminal groups everywhere. There are connections
with politicians and office-holders high in power, with ample money
drawn from the business in which they were engaged and with in-
464 Problems of Crime and Morals [1926
fluence which, in a mere state case, might have prevented any success-
ful prosecutions.
The money now available from bootlegging operations is a very
important factor in the problem of crime generally. It furnishes the
sinews of war when the police are engaged more actively than usual
in making arrests. It buys bondsmen and the property which bonds-
men pledge. It employs able lawyers for defense, and it purchases
influence. This element of corruption has so affected the administra-
tion of justice that it is most certainly to be named a major cause of
crime:
After an experience extending to an intimate contact for several
years with this question, a contact which has included participation
in the two major investigations of the field made in Cleveland and in
Missouri, the writer of this article is brought to the conclusion that
of all causes of the mounting tide of crime in America, the political
aspect is the most important. New laws and new scientific discoveries
will not avail much. Increased severity of punishment can accomplish
very little. The institutions which are charged with law enforcement
are too intimately bound to political interests. The influence of the
political factors suggested in the preceding paragraphs must bear the
major responsibility for the “crime wave.” ‘Thirty years ago, the
government of the American city was called a failure by Lord Bryce
because its politics had become utterly corrupted by public contracts
and public utilities. To-day, more profitable interests have found
lodgment in the processes of justice.
Raymond Moley, in Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social
Science (Philadelphia, May, 1926), CXXV, 78-84 passim.
CHAPTER XXI— LABOR AND INDUSTRY
110. A Laborer Meets His First Capitalist (1900)
BY SECRETARY JAMES J. DAVIS (1922)
This extract is from the autobiography of a Welsh immigrant boy who made a
same and place for himself in America, lent his energies to a variety of public-
spirited undertakings, and served in the cabinets of Presidents Harding, Cool-
idge and Hoover, as Secretary of Labor. He early saw the importance of the or-
ganization of labor and the necessity also of avoiding arbitrary power. He had
good success in the pacific settlement of labor disputes.—Bibliography: Samuei
Gompers, Seventy Years of Life and Labor; David Karsner, Debs, his Life and
Letiers; F. F. Carlton, Problems of Organized ‘Labor; Selig Perlman, Trade U nionism
in the United States; American Year Book, Vols. 1910-1919, 1925, articles on Labor.
LWOOD, Indiana, was a small village that had been called
Duck Creek Post-Office until the tin mill and other industries
began making it into a city. In my capacity as president of the local
union and head of the mill wage committee, I was put in personal
contact with the heads of these great industrial enterprises. This
was my first introduction to men of large affairs.
I approached them with the inborn thought that they must be some
sort of human monsters. The communist books that Comrade Ban-
nerman had given me taught me to believe that capitalists had no
human feelings like ordinary mortals. I therefore expected to find
the mill-boss as cunning as the fox and ape combined. I supposed
that his word would be worthless as a pledge and would be given only
for the purpose of tricking me. His manners I expected to be rude;
he would shout at me and threaten me, hoping to take away my cour-
age and send me back to my fellows beaten.
What I found, of course, was a self-possessed man, the model of
courtesy and exactness. He differed from us men in one respect.
His mind was complex instead of simplex. That is, he could think
on two sides of a question at the same time. He had so trained his
mind by much use of it that it was as nimble as the hands of a juggler
who can keep several objects tossing in the air at the same time. We
465
466 Labor and Industry [z900
men were clumsy thinkers, and one thing at a time was all we could
handle without fumbling it.
The great manufacturer never showed any emotion. He was never
angry, domineering, sneering or insulting. He kept these emotions
under control because they could do him no good, and because they
would give pain to others. We fellows never hesitated to show how
we felt. We would jibe one another, laugh at a fellow to his chagrin,
and when we were angry bawl each other out unmercifully. For a
fellow to smile when he was angry and not let the other fellow know
it, was a trick we had not learned. That a bloodthirsty, cruel capitalist
should be such a graceful fellow was a shock to me. I saw from the
start that the communist picture of a capitalist as a bristling, snorting
hog was the farthest thing from the truth. The picture was drawn by
malice and not from a desire to tell the truth.
I learned that when Mr. Reid and his fellows gave their word they
never broke it. It was hard to get a promise from them, but once they
made a promise they always fulfilled it. If they said they would meet
us at a certain hour, they were always there on the minute. They were
patient, firm and reasonable, and they always treated us as their
equals.
They always gave us the reasons for the stand they took. At first
I doubted their sincerity, but in the end I learned that the reasons
they cited were the true reasons. At first they thought that they
would have to guard themselves against roguery and doubledealing
on the part of the tin workers. This showed that they had had un-
pleasant experiences. For, men who knew their business as well as
they did must surely have had some cause for their suspicion. Base-
less suspicion is a trait of ignorant men, and these men were not
ignorant. A burnt child dreads the fire.
I decided to take them as my models, to learn all their virtues and
let them know that I was as square in my dealings with them as they
were with me. I studied their business as thoroughly as I studied
the case of the men. I soon got from them all the concessions we had
demanded when we called the strike. It was fortunate for us that
the strike was cancelled, for we kept our jobs and in due course got
all the things we were going to strike for.
In fact, I got so many concessions by dickering with those bosses
that I made life a burden for them at times. I knew the cost of every
No. 111] The Courts and Labor 467
different kind of plate the mill put out, and so I could demand a high
rate of wages and support my demands with logic. My midnight
studies had not been in vain. It all came back in cash to the working
man; and yet it was my own pals who had rebuked me for being too
bookish. This did not make me sour. I loved the fellows just the
same, and when they showed their faith in me, it more than paid me
back.
But I had learned this general rule: The average working man thinks
mostly of the present. He leaves to students and to capitalists the
safeguarding of the future.
James J. Davis, The Iron Puddler (Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1922), 191-
194. Reprinted by special permission of the publishers.
— eo
111. The Courts and Labor (1908)
BY PRESIDENT THEODORE ROOSEVELT
For Roosevelt see Nos. 23-26 above.—Bibliography as in No. 110 above. See
also No. 112 below.
T the last election certain leaders of organized labor made a
violent and sweeping attack upon the entire judiciary of the
country, an attack couched in such terms as to include the most up-
right, honest, and broad-minded judges, no less than those of narrower
mind and more restricted outlook. It was the kind of attack admirably
fitted to prevent any successful attempt to reform abuses of the judi-
ciary, because it gave the champions of the unjust judge their eagerly
desired opportunity to shift their ground into a championship of just
judges who were unjustly assailed.
Last year, before the House Committee on the Judiciary, these same
labor leaders formulated their demands, specifying the bill that con-
tained them, refusing all compromise, stating they wished the principle
of that bill or nothing. They insisted on a provision that in a labor
dispute no injunction should issue except to protect a property right,
and specifically provided that the right to carry on business should
not be construed as a property right, and in a second provision their
bill made legal in a labor dispute any act or agreement by or between
468 Labor and Industry [1908
two or more persons that would not have been unlawful if done by a
single person.
In other words, this bill legalized blacklisting and boycotting in
every form—legalizing, for instance, those forms of the secondary
boycott which the Anthracite Coal Strike Commission so unreservedly
condemned; while the right to carry on a business was explicitly
taken out from under that protection which the law throws over
property. The demand was made that there shouid be trial by jury
in contempt cases, thereby most seriously impairing the authority of
the courts. All this represented a course of policy which, if carried
out, would mean the enthronement of class privilege in its crudest
and most brutal form, and the destruction of one of the most essential
functions of the judiciary in all civilized lands.
The violence of the crusade for this legislation, and its complete
failure, illustrate two truths which it is essential our people should
learn. In the first place, they ought to teach the workingmen, the
laborer, the wage-worker, that by demanding what is improper and
impossible he plays into the hands of his foes.
Such a crude and vicious attack upon the courts, even if it were
temporarily successful, would inevitably in the end cause a violent
reaction and would band the great mass of citizens together, forcing
them to stand by all the judges, competent and incompetent alike,
rather than to see the wheels of justice stopped. A movement of
this kind can ultimately result in nothing but damage to those in
whose behalf it is nominally undertaken. This is a most healthy
truth, which it is wise for all our people to learn.
Any movement based on that class hatred which at times assumes
the name of “class consciousness” is certain ultimately to fail, and
if it temporarily succeeds, to do far-reaching damage. “Class con-
sciousness,” where it is merely another name for the odious vice of
class selfishness, is equally noxious whether in an employer’s associa-
tion or in a workingman’s association.
The movement in question was one in which the appeal was made
to all workingmen to vote primarily, not as American citizens, but as
individuals of a certain class in society. Such an appeal in the first
place revolts the more high-minded and far-sighted among the persons
to whom it is addressed, and in the second place tends to arouse a
strong antagonism among all other classes of citizens, whom it there-
No. 111] The Courts and Labor 469
fore tends to unite against the very organization on whose behalf it is
issued. The result is therefore unfortunate from every standpoint.
This healthy truth, by the way, will be learned by the socialists if they
ever succeed in establishing in this country an important national
party based on such class consciousness and selfish class interest.
The wage-workers, the workingmen, the laboring men of the coun-
try, by the way in which they repudiated the effort to get them to cast
their votes in response to an appeal to class hatred, have emphasized
their sound patriotism and Americanism. The whole country has
cause to feel pride in this attitude of sturdy independence, in this
uncompromising insistence upon acting simply as good citizens, as
good Americans, without regard to fancied—and improper—class
interests. Such an attitude is an object-lesson in good citizenship to
the entire nation.
But the extreme reactionaries, the persons who blind themselves
to the wrongs now and then committed by the courts on laboring men,
should also think seriously as to what such a movement as this por-
tends. The judges who have shown themselves able and willing
effectively to check the dishonest activity of the very rich man who
works iniquity by the mismanagement of corporations, who have
shown themselves alert to do justice to the wage-worker, and sympa-
thetic with the needs of the mass of our people, so that the dweller in
the tenement houses, the man who practices a dangerous trade, the
man who is crushed by excessive hours of labor, feel that their needs
are understood by the courts—these judges are the real bulwark of
the courts; these judges, the judges of the stamp of the President-
elect, who have been fearless in opposing labor when it has gone
wrong, but fearless also in holding to strict account corporations
that work iniquity, and far-sighted in seeing that the workingman
gets his rights, are the men of all others to whom we owe it that the
appeal for such violent and mistaken legislation has fallen on deaf
ears, that the agitation for its passage proved to be without substantial
basis.
The courts are jeopardized primarily by the action of these Federal
and State judges who show inability or unwillingness to put a stop to
the wrongdoing of very rich men under modern industrial conditions,
and inability or unwillingness to give relief to men of small means or
wage-workers who are crushed down by these modern industrial con-
470 Labor and Industry [r915
ditions; who, in other words, fail to understand and apply the needed
remedies for the new wrongs produced by the new and highly complex
social and industrial civilization which has grown up in the last half-
century.
Theodore Roosevelt, Message to Congress, December, 1908, in Cong. Record.
Boa
t12. The Labor Union Boycott (1915)
BY JUSTICE OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
For Holmes see No. ror above and No. 122 below.—Bibliography as in No. rro
above. See also No. 111 above.
wees HIS is an action under the act of July 2, 1890, for a combi-
nation and conspiracy in restraint of commerce among
the States, specifically directed against the plaintiffs, among others,
and effectively carried out with the infliction of great damage. The
declaration was held good on demurrer in Loewe v. Lawlor where
it will be found set forth at length. The substance of the charge is
that the plaintiffs were hat manufacturers who employed non-union
labor; that the defendants were members of the United Hatters of
North America and also of the American Federation of Labor; that
in pursuance of a general scheme to unionize the labor employed by
manufacturers of fur hats (a purpose previously made effective against
all but a few manufacturers), the defendants and other members of the
United Hatters caused the American Federation of Labor to declare
a boycott against the plaintiffs and against all hats sold by the plain-
tiffs to dealers in other States and against dealers who should deal in
them; and that they carried out their plan with such success that they
have restrained or destroyed the plaintiff’s commerce with other
States. The case now has been tried, the plaintiffs have got a verdict,
and the judgment of the District Court has been affirmed by the
Circuit Court of Appeals.
The grounds for discussion under the statute that were not cut
away by the decision upon the demurrer have been narrowed still
further since the trial by the case of Eastern States Retail Lumber
No. 112] The Labor Union Boycott 47I
Dealers’ Association v. United States. Whatever may be the law
otherwise, that case establishes that, irrespective of compulsion or
even agreement to observe its intimation, the circulation of a list of
“unfair dealers,” manifestly intended to put the ban upon those
whose names appear therein, among an important body of possible
customers combined with a view to joint action and in anticipation
of such reports, is within the prohibitions of the Sherman Acct if it is
intended to restrain and restrains commerce among the States.
It requires more than the blindness of justice not to see that many
branches of the United Hatters and the Federation of Labor, to both
of which the defendants belonged, in pursuance of a plan emanating
from headquarters made use of such lists, and of the primary and sec-
ondary boycott in their effort to subdue the plaintiffs to their demands.
The union label was used and a strike of the plaintiffs’ employés was
ordered and carried out to the same end, and the purpose to break up
the plaintiffs’ commerce affected the quality of the acts. We agree
with the Circuit Court of Appeals that a combination and conspiracy
forbidden by the statutes were proved, and that the question is nar-
rowed to the responsibility of the defendants for what was done by the
sanction and procurement of the societies above named.
The court in substance instructed the jury that if these members
paid their dues and continued to delegate authority to their officers
unlawfully to interfere with the plaintiffs’ interstate commerce in
such circumstances that they knew or ought to have known, and
such officers were warranted in the belief that they were acting in
the matters within their delegated authority, then such members
were jointly liable, and no others. It seems to us that this instruc-
tion sufficiently guarded the defendants’ rights and that the defend-
ants got all that they were entitled to ask in not being held
chargeable with knowledge as matter of law. It is a tax on credulity
to ask anyone to believe that members of labor unions at that
time did not know that the primary and secondary boycott and
the use of the “We don’t patronize” or “Unfair” list were means
expected to be employed in the effort to unionize shops. Very possibly
they were thought to be lawful. By the constitution of the United
Hatters the directors are to use “all the means in their power” to
bring shops “not under our jurisdiction” “into the trade.” The by-
laws provide a separate fund to be kept for strikes, lockouts, and
472 Labor and Industry [r915
agitation for the union label. Members are forbidden to sell non-
union hats. The Federation of Labor with which the Hatters were
affiliated had organization of labor for one of its objects, helped
affiliated unions in trade disputes, and to that end, before the present
trouble, had provided in its constitution for prosecuting and had
prosecuted many what it called legal boycotts. Their conduct in this
and former cases was made public especially among the members
in every possible way. If the words of the documents on their face
and without explanation did not authorize what was done, the evidence
of what was done publicly and habitually showed their meaning and
how they were interpreted. The jury could not but find that by the
usage of the unions the acts complained of were authorized, and au-
thorized without regard to their interference with commerce among the
States. We think it unnecessary to repeat the evidence of the publicity
of this particular struggle in the common newspapers and union prints,
evidence that made it almost inconceivable that the defendants, all
living in the neighborhood of the plaintiffs, did not know what was
done in the specific case. If they did not know that, they were bound
to know the constitutions of their societies, and at least well might be
found to have known how the words of those constitutions had been
constructed in the act.
It is suggested that injustice was done by the judge speaking of
“proof” that in carrying out the object of the associations unlawful
means had been used with their approval. The judge cautioned the
jury with special care not to take their view of what had been proved
from him, going even further than he need have gone. But the con-
text showed plainly that proof was used here in a popular way for
evidence and must have been understood in that sense.
Damages accruing since the action began were allowed, but only
such as were the consequence of acts done before and constituting
part of the cause of action declared on. This was correct. We shall
not discuss the objections to evidence separately and in detail as
we find no error requiring it. The introduction of newspapers, etc.,
was proper in large part to show publicity in places and directions
where the facts were likely to be brought home to the defendants,
and also to prove an intended and detrimental consequence of the
principal acts, not to speak of other grounds. The reason given by
customers for ceasing to deal with sellers of the Loewe hats, including
No. 113] The Age of Big Business 473,
letters from dealers to Loewe & Co., were admissible. We need not
repeat or add to what was said by the Circuit Court of Appeals with
regard to evidence of the payment of dues after this suit was begun.
And in short neither the argument nor the perusal of the voluminous
brief for the plaintiffs in error shows that they suffered any injustice
or that there was any error requiring the judgment to be reversed.
Justice Holmes, Opinion of the United States Supreme Court in Lawlor v. Loewe,
235 U. S. Reports, 533-537.
— e
113. The Age of Big Business (1919)
BY BURTON J. HENDRICK
Hendrick is widely known as a journalist and editor. He edited the Life and
Letters of Walter H. Page. For Ford’s account of his automobile manufacturing
methods, see No. 154 below.—Bibliography: Garet Garrett, The American Omen;
Harold U. Faulkner, American Economic History. See also bibliography of No. 83
above.
UPERLATIVES come naturally to mind in discussing American
progress, but hardly any extravagant phrases could do justice
to the development of American automobiles. In 1909 the United
States produced 3700 motor vehicles; in 1916 we made 1,500,000.
The man who now makes a personal profit of not far from $50,000,000
a year in this industry was a puttering mechanic when the twentieth
century came in. If we capitalized Henry Ford’s income, he is prob-
ably a richer man than Rockefeller; yet, as recently as 1905 his pos-
sessions consisted of a little shed of a factory which employed a dozen
workmen. Dazzling as is this personal success, its really important
aspects are the things for which it stands. The American automobile
has had its wild-cat days; for the larger part, however, its leaders have
paid little attention to Wall Street, but have limited their activities
exclusively to manufacturing. Moreover, the automobile illustrates
more completely than any other industry the technical qualities that
so largely explain our industrial progress. Above all, American
manufacturing has developed three characteristics. These are
quantity production, standardization, and the use of labor-saving
machinery. It is because Ford and other manufacturers adapted
474 Labor and Industry [1919
these principles to making the automobile that the American motor
industry has reached such gigantic proportions.
A few years ago an English manufacturer, seeking the explanation
of America’s ability to produce an excellent car so cheaply, made an
interesting experiment. He obtained three American automobiles,
all of the same “standardized” make, and gave them a long and rack-
ing tour over English highways. Workmen then took apart the
three cars and threw the disjointed remains into a promis; vous
heap. Every bolt, bar, gas tank, motor, wheel, and tire was taken
from its accustomed place and piled up, a hideous mass of rubbish.
Workmen then painstakingly put together three cars from these dis-
ordered elements. Three chauffeurs jumped on these cars, aud they
immediately started down the road and made a long journey just a
acceptably as before. The Englishman had learned the secret of
American success with automobiles. The one word “stanvlardiza.-
tion” explained the mystery.
Yet when, a few years before, the English referred to the Ainerican
automobile as a “glorified perambulator,” the characterization was
not unjust. This new method of transportation was slow in finding
favor on our side of the Atlantic. America was sentimentally and
practically devoted to the horse as the motive power for vehicles;
and the fact that we had so few good roads also worked against the
introduction of the automobile. Yet here, as in Europe, the me-
chanically propelled wagon made its appearance in early times. This
vehicle, like the bicycle, is not essentially a modern invention; the
reason any one can manufacture it is that practically all the basic
ideas antedate 1840. Indeed, the automobile is really older than the
railroad. . . . The French and English machines created an entirely
different reaction in the mind of an imaginative mechanic in Detroit.
Probably American annals contain no finer story than that of this
simple American workman. Yet from the beginning it seemed in-
evitable that Henry Ford should play this appointed part in the world.
Born in Michigan in 1863, the son of an English farmer who had
emigrated to Michigan and a Dutch mother, Ford had always demon-
strated an interest in things far removed from his farm. Only mechan-
ical devices interested him. He liked getting in the crops, because
McCormick harvesters did most of the work; it was only the machinery
of the dairy that held him enthralled. He developed destructive tend-
No. 113] The Age of Big Business 475
encies as a boy; he had to take everything to pieces. He horrified a
rich playmate by resolving his new watch into its component parts—
and promptly quieted him by putting it together again. “Every clock
in the house shuddered when it saw me coming,” he recently said.
He constructed a small working forge in his school-yard, and built
a small steam engine that could make ten miles an hour. He spent his
winter evenings reading mechanical and scientific journals; he cared
little for general literature, but machinery in any form was almost
a pathological obsession. Some boys run away from the farm to
join the circus or to go to sea; Henry Ford at the age of sixteen ran
away to get a job ina machine shop. Here one anomaly immediately
impressed him. No two machines were made exactly alike; each was
regarded as a separate job. With his savings from his weekly wage
of $2.50, young Ford purchased a three dollar watch, and immediately
dissected it. If several thousand of these watches could be made,
each one exactly alike, they would cost only thirty-seven cents apiece.
“Then,” said Ford to himself, ‘everybody could have one.” He
had fairly elaborated his plans to start a factory on this basis when his
father’s illness called him back to the farm.
This was about 1880; Ford’s next conspicuous appearance in Detroit
was about 1892. This appearance was not only conspicuous; it was
exceedingly noisy. Detroit now knew him as the pilot of a queer
affair that whirled and lurched through her thoroughfares, making
as much disturbance as a freight train. In reading his technical
journals Ford had met many descriptions of horseless carriages; the
consequence was that he had again broken away from the farm,
taken a job at $45 a month in a Detroit machine shop, and devoted
his evenings to the production of a gasoline engine. His young wife
was exceedingly concerned about his health; the neighbors’ snap
judgment was that he was insane. Only two other Americans, Charles
B. Duryea and Ellwood Haynes, were attempting to construct an
automobile at that time. Long before Ford was ready with his ma-
chine, others had begun to appear. Duryea turned out his first one
in 1892; and foreign makes began to appear in considerable numbers.
But the Detroit mechanic had a more comprehensive inspiration.
He was not working to make one of the finely upholstered and beau-
tifully painted vehicles that came from overseas. “Anything that
isn’t good for everybody is no good at all,” he said. Precisely as it
476 Labor and Industry [1919
was Vail’s ambition to make every American a user of the telephone
and McCormick’s to make every farmer a user of his harvester, so
it was Ford’s determination that every family should have an auto-
mobile. He was apparently the only man in those times who saw that
this new machine was not primarily a luxury but a convenience.
Yet all the manufacturers, here and in Europe, laughed at his idea.
Why not give every poor man a Fifth Avenue house? Frenchmen
and Englishmen scouted the idea that any one could make a cheap
automobile. Its machinery was particularly refined and called for
the highest grade of steel; the clever Americans might use their labor-
saving devices on many products, but only skillful hand work could
turn out a motor car. European manufacturers regarded each car
as a separate problem; they individualized its manufacture almost
as scrupulously as a painter paints his portrait or a poet writes his
poem. The result was that only a man with several thousand dollars
could purchase one. But Henry Ford—and afterward other American
makers—had quite a different conception.
Henry Ford’s earliest banker was the proprietor of a quick-lunch
wagon at which the inventor used to eat his midnight meal after
his hard evening’s work in the shed. “Coffee Jim,” to whom Ford
confided his hopes and aspirations on these occasions, was the only
man with available cash who had any faith in his ideas. Capital in
more substantial form, however, came in about 1902. With money
advanced by “Coffee Jim,” Ford had built a machine which he entered
in the Grosse Point races that year. It was a hideous-looking affair,
but it ran like the wind and outdistanced all competitors. From that
day Ford’s career has been an uninterrupted triumph. But he re-
jected the earliest offers of capital because the millionaires would
not agree to his terms. They were looking for high prices and quick
profits, while Ford’s plans were for low prices, large sales, and use
of profits to extend the business and reduce the cost of his machine.
Henry Ford’s greatness as a manufacturer consists in the tenacity
with which he has clung to this conception. Contrary to general
belief in the automobile industry he maintained that a high sale price
was not necessary for large profits; indeed he declared that the lower
the price, the larger the net earnings would be. Nor did he believe
that low wages meant prosperity. The most efficient labor, no matter
what the nominal cost might be, was the most economical. The secret
No. 114] Prohibiting Child Labor 477
of success was the rapid production of a serviceable article in large
quantities. When Ford first talked of turning out 10,000 automobiles
a year, his associates asked him where he was going to sell them.
Ford’s answer was that that was no problem at all; the machines
would sell themselves. He called attention to the fact that there were
millions of people in this country whose incomes exceeded $1800 a year;
all in that class would become prospective purchasers of a low-priced
automobile. There were 6,000,000 farmers; what more receptive
market could one ask? His only problem was the technical one—
how to produce his machine in sufficient quantities.
Burton J. Hendrick, The Age of Big Business [Chronicles of America Series,
XXXIX] (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1919), 171-181 passim.
114. Prohibiting Child Labor (1919)
BY OWEN R. LOVEJOY
Lovejoy, a sociologist by vocation, was General Secretary of the National Child
Labor Commission from 1907 to 1926, and has been Secretary of the Children’s Aid
Society of New York, since that time. He is also editor of The American Child.
See also No. 118 below.
ITHERTO we have more or less unconsciously employed the
sliding scale in relation to child-labor standards. We put prohi-
bition of night work in one State, which had an extremely low all-round
standard, on very much the same plane of achievement as establish-
ing an eight- instead of a ten-hour day in another State, which had
relatively high standards. That is, it has been natural to work with
almost equal enthusiasm for high standards in States where the
demand for them was strong and for much lower standards where
the demand was less or where it was lacking. Then when those stand-
ards were established we worked for still higher ones. We used the
sliding scale in accordance with the age-old theory of demand and
supply. This theory in economics is fallacious. It is time to discard
it in social work. It is time to consider solely the individual, for what
is right for the individual is right for industry and society and the world
at large.
478 Labor and Industry [1919
Arguments have been used to prove that child labor is not eco-
nomical; that it is fatal to labor because it lowers wages; that it is not
in harmony with efficiency for the manufacturer; that it is not con-
ducive to the education or to the physical health and vigor of the
nation. Now it is time to talk of the child, and in turning to the child
it is evident that really very little account has been taken of him.
We know that work cannot be good for his health, but we do not
know scientifically how bad it is for him, nor what are the effects of
different kinds of work upon his development, nor at what age it
is, physically speaking, permissible for him to enter industry in
general.
A few States require by law a physical examination of children when
they leave school and apply for work permits, but the fact that these
children have not been subject to systematic physical examinations
during their school life makes this examination of almost negligible
value. Furthermore, up to date not a single one of the 48 common-
wealths requires systematic physical examination of children between
14 and 16 years of age who are at work. America has not even had
the intellectual curiosity to try to find out what industry does to
her children.
Furthermore, though certain studies have been made of child nature,
of child psychology, and of adolescence, we really do not know what
the child needs mentally and spiritually. I think it is time we applied
ourselves to this task. We know that nearly half the children who
leave school in order to go to work do so because they are tired of
school, because they dislike the teacher, “did not get on,” or prefer
to work. Why does this common phenomenon of revolt against school
appear so regularly at the age of 13 or 14? Is it the fault of the child
or of the school? Are we willing frankly to face the fact that the
elaborate and formal school system built up by us adults on behalf
of children is not acceptable to the beneficiaries? That perhaps they
could point a way to its improvement? What in short are the needs
of children? It is evident that in order to fix our standards, this
question must first be answered. But until the studies can be made—
and they never can be finished, for as science advances new light will
continually be thrown upon one of its most interesting and baffling
problems—certain minimum legislative requirements should be set
up, to be established as soon as possible in the more advanced com-
No. 114] Prohibiting Child Labor 479
munities, and to be approached for the present as a limit in States
whose citizens demand less protection.
A reasonable minimum age for entrance into industry would be 16
years. This should apply to all common work, such as that offered by
factories, mills, canneries, offices, stores, laundries, restaurants, and
to all the miscellaneous occupations entered by children. It should
be a flat minimum, that is, for all gainful occupations with the one
exception of agriculture. Eighteen years should be the minimum age
for work in mines and other especially dangerous industries, and 21
the age for morally dangerous work such as falls to the lot of night
messengers in our cities. There should be periodic examination of
all working children to see that they are not being broken down in
health, and means should be adopted for their transfer, if advisable,
to less harmful industries or their removal from industry altogether.
Such an examination, made not less than once a year, would in a short
time show just what are the industries and operations which induce
excessive fatigue, predispose to disease, or lead to stunted growth.
As to hours of employment the regulations recently proposed by
the Commission on International Labor Legislation for insertion in the
Peace Treaty and adopted by the Peace Conference in Paris, April
28, 1919, offer a suggestive basis. The Sixth Article proposes “the
abolition of child labor and the imposition of such limitations on the
labor of young persons as shall permit the continuation of their edu-
cation and assure their proper physical development.” The term
“abolition of child labor” is so indefinite that unless light were thrown
upon it by other portions of the statement, it would have little more
effect than similar declarations in our own national political party
platforms. Fortunately, however, the commission speaks with a
definiteness that leaves no room for doubt. The Fourth Article pro-
poses “the adoption of an eight-hour day or a 48-hour week as the
standard to be aimed at where it has not already been obtained.”
This limitation of hours does not relate to child labor, which, according
to Article Six, is to be entirely abolished. This eight-hour day and 48-
hour week refers to labor in general—to the protection of men and
women—to those of mature physical development.
The corollary is obvious, and it has already been recognized under
existing conditions by the adoption of an eight-hour day for children
in States where the limitations of hours for men and women were 10,
480 Labor and Industry [1919
11, or 12 hours, or where, perhaps, no limitation existed. The principle
underlying this discrimination in the interest of children assumes that
the growing, developing child subjected to industry should have the
burden laid on gradually rather than all at once, and that if men and
women need protection, children need more protection. But now we
face a new condition, for certainly America with its natural resources
and abundance of enterprise cannot afford to stand on a lower plane
than the one proposed in this international labor compact. If an
eight-hour day measures a desirable social limitation for the labor of
men and women, then an eight-hour day is too long for the labor of
children. For the first two years at least—namely from 16 to 18 years
of age—no child engaged in ordinary industrial processes should be
employed to exceed six hours a day. Therefore we should propose
as the maximum industrial burden that restriction of hours to six per
day and prohibition of night work[for those] under 18 years of age
should of course form part of the program.
Obviously this program cannot be put into immediate effect so
long as excessive industrial burdens are laid on the shoulders of half-
starved mothers, and so long as our schools persist in “teaching” in-
stead of educating our children. It would be absurd to force law-
making ahead of standards that public opinion can maintain. But
these standards are suggested as the ones that in our educational and
legislative work should undoubtedly be our object. How soon we
may hope to approach them under existing conditions I leave to our
statistical experts. Since 1890 our population has increased 60 per
cent and our net annual production of wealth has increased 700 per
cent. Obviously, therefore, if people were able to exist in 1890 they
should be able to exist on a very much higher plane and a more com-
fortable plane in 1918; and during this period we have produced
millionaires more prolifically than anything else except paupers.
Although approximately three-fourths of our working children are
employed in agriculture, this is one of the most difficult of all occupa-
tions to regulate. Farm work is undoubtedly harmful when accom-
panied by exploitation as in the Colorado beet fields and the Southern
cotton fields, and yet work about the home farm on a variety of
occupations, or work for a neighbor, may be highly healthful and
instructive. The most serious objection to this form of work is
that it almost invariably tends to keep the child out of school for
No. 114] Prohibiting Child Labor 481
more or less of the short period that rural schools are in session. The
child gradually falls behind his normal grade, one year, two years,
or three years. He is both ashamed and bored at being forced to study
with younger children on matters that are too elementary to hold his
attention. Retardation leads to further retardation and to early
dropping out altogether.
The trouble suggests the cure. While it might be unfair and would
undoubtedly be quite impossible to enforce a law directed against
the employment of children on farms, we can raise the educational
standard in rural communities, and we must do so at once if we wish
to retain our rural population and our agricultural soundness. The
condition of our rural communities not only affects our social and civic
institutions; it strikes at the very foundation of economic prosperity.
Ten per cent of the rural population cannot read an agricultural
bulletin, a tarm journal, a thrift appeal, a newspaper, the Constitu-
tion, or their Bibles; answer an income tax questionnaire; or keep
business accounts. Secretary Lane says: “We spent millions of dollars
in presenting to the country the reasons why we were at war, and more
than ten per cent of the money that was spent was spent fruitlessly,
because the people who got the literature, who got the speeches, who
got the appeals, could not understand one word that was written.”
One thing that draws our boys to the city is the call of life and
human intercourse and better facilities for knowledge. If we can in
some manner endow our country schools with vitality, man them with
teachers earning and getting living wages, introduce the spirit of com-
munity effort, and give scope for the instinct of workmanship, and if
we can then create and enforce adequate compulsory education laws,
we shall have eliminated the worst evil of children’s employment in
agriculture. We shall at the same time be building up an educationally
equipped and consciously effective agricultural and land-minded
population.
Continuation schools and laws compelling employers to allow time
for attendance by their employees under 18 years of age should be
the reverse side of our child-labor laws. But it is very difficult to
confine oneself to legislative prohibitions when the whole trend of
child-labor effort and education work in this country is in the direc-
tion of construction rather than prohibition. Our enforced laws,
however good, however effective in keeping children out of industry
482 Labor and Industry [1923
and in school, will avail very little unless we provide a better substitute
than work, and a better school system and curriculum than the one in
vogue. And here we return to the question of children’s needs. Let
us by all means work for the minimum standards which common
sense and our industrial experience justify, but let us at once begin
the campaign for the scientific determination of the physical effects
of work, through regular physical examination of school and working
children. Let us by all means encourage educational experiments,
especially those which seek in some way to satisfy the craving of youth
and adolescence for real work, for learning through doing, and for
wage-earning. If wecan finally eliminate the two evils of being taught
on the one hand and being exploited on the other, we shall have
touched the heart of the problem. It is possible that this may be done
by bringing work into the schools or taking the schools out into the
world of adult endeavor and labor; by substituting for our industrial
training, education through responsibility and initiative in different
kinds of hand and brain work. Such experiments will inevitably
lead to a better understanding of child nature and to an interpreta-
tion of its unexpressed demands.
Owen R. Lovejoy, in Standards of Child Welfare: Report of Children’s Bureau
Conferences (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1919), 81-85.
—— eo
115. Workmen’s Compensation (1923)
BY EZEKIEL HENRY DOWNEY
Downey (1879-1922) was compensation actuary of the Insurance Department
of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Compensation Rating and Inspection
Bureau.—Bibliography: American Year Book; Monthly Labor Review of the De-
partment of Labor.
HE awakening of public conscience to the social problem of
work injuries led, near the end of the first decade of the present
century, to the appointment of many official commissions and legis-
lative committees to investigate the subject of employers’ liability
and workmen’s compensation. These commissions held public hear-
ings, took volumes of testimony, gathered much original material
on the working of employers’ liability and recommended legislation
designed to sweep away the common-law system. In consequence of
No. 115} Workmen’s Compensation 483
all this agitation sixteen compensation laws were enacted before the
close of the legislative year 1912. The less progressive states gradually
fell into line until at the end of 1921 only six commonwealths and the
District of Columbia retained the outworn system of employers’
liability. Seldom has a legislative movement of equal social signifi-
cance spread more rapidly over the land.
Territorially speaking, the American compensation system is al-
most complete. Save only Missouri, every industrially important
commonwealth in the United States, and every manufacturing or
mining province in the Dominion of Canada has embodied the principle
of compensation in statute law. Industrially the new system is much
less comprehensive. Congress has failed to enact laws for the pro-
tection of seamen and of railway workers engaged in interstate com-
merce and the Federal Supreme Court, by a most unfortunate decision,
removed longshoremen from the jurisdiction of the several states.
Congress passed an act, on June 10, 1922, amending the Judicial
Code, which undertook to give to the states jurisdiction over maritime
workers, except members of the crews of vessels. This act was de-
clared unconstitutional by the Federal Court of the Southern District
of Alabama. Most of the state laws except agricultural and domestic
employments, many exempt establishments which employ fewer then
four, five or even ten persons, some few leave public employees with-
out the pale. Certain acts are limited to enumerated “extra-haz-
ardous”’ employments but the list of such employments is usually
so comprehensive as to belie the designation. Some workers and
casual employees not in the regular course of the employer’s business
are everywhere excluded. In respect to injuries covered a majority
of the jurisdictions still exclude occupational disease and nearly all
require that the injury shall both arise out of and occur in the course
of the employment. Having regard to all these limitations it is per-
haps within the mark to say that some two-thirds of the work injuries
which annually occur in the United States are covered by the compen-
sation scheme.
Taking the country as a whole and disregarding injuries not subject
to compensation, the temporary disability benefit is not more than
one-fourth the wage loss.
For permanent disabilities compensation bears a still smaller
proportion to economic loss. Only nine states—New York, Ohio,
484 Labor and Industry [1923
West Virginia, Colorado, Oregon, Washington, North Dakota, Ne-
braska and Nevada—pay a straight life pension for permanent total
disability. Even these pensions in no case exceed two-thirds of wages
and all are subject to arbitrary weekly maxima. California, Idaho,
Illinois, Montana and Utah, provide that payments shall continue
during total disability but shall be reduced to $12, $10, or even $5
weekly after five, six or ten years, if the injured is so unfortunate as to
survive beyond that period. In other states payment for total dis-
ability is limited to six, eight or ten years, and often to a total amount
of $4,000 or $5,000. Since the average age of persons permanently
incapacitated by injuries is little more than forty years the typical
American compensation act provides only partial support for about
one-third of the remaining life expectancy.
Still more curious, inadequate and indefensible are the benefits for
permanent partial disability. For loss of a hand, foot, leg or eye the
rate of compensation is usually the same as for total disability but the
duration thereof is limited to a stated number of weeks: 200 weeks for
the loss of an arm or leg, 150 weeks for the loss of a hand or foot, 100
weeks for the loss of an eye. No attempt is made in these specific
indemnity schedules to apportion the amount of compensation to the
degree of disability or even to preserve any relativity as among the
several injuries enumerated. One state allows more for an arm than
for a leg, another reverses these proportions; one accounts a hand
the same as an arm, another distinguishes shoulder, elbow, wrist and
palm. Wholly apart from these haphazard inequalities, the schedules
are fundamentally unscientific and inequitable in that they provide
compensation for a limited term on account of disability which is
permanent in character. .
In case of death seven states—Minnesota, New York, West Vir-
ginia, Washington, Oregon, North Dakota and Nevada—and the
Federal government provide a pension to the widow during widowhood
and to children up to the age at which they may legally be employed.
In Pennsylvania, Delaware, Idaho and Wyoming payments to chil-
dren continue through the period of compulsory school attendance
although the widow’s pension terminates six or eight years after the
husband’s death. But in quite three-fourths of all the states the
death benefit ceases after a stated number of weeks—commonly six
years—irrespective of the number, ages or status of dependents.
No. 115] Workmen’s Compensation 485
Even this short period often is further curtailed by the device of a
maximum total amount. In two-thirds of the states, again, compensa-
tion is the same to a widow and seven children as to a widow alone.
The pensions usually are very small. Under most of the statutes the
rate is the same as for disability and is subject to the same weekly
maximum: $12, $15, or $18. In eighteen commonwealths the allow-
ance varies with the number and relationship of dependents. The
widow’s pension in a majority of these states is nominally thirty or
forty per cent of wages with ten per cent additional for each child,
but the maximum weekly payment to the largest family is $12 in
Pennsylvania, $15 in Alabama and only $20 in New York. By a
singular perversion of common sense the allowance to orphaned
children is usually less (where any distinction is made) than to an
able-bodied widow. But neither the inadequate weekly payment
rate nor the limited total amount is as indefensible as the fore-short-
ened duration of payments. A majority of children orphaned by
industrial accidents are under eight years of age, more than a third
are under five and nearly a sixth are under two. Compensation to
these children, is, in most states, cut off before they have finished
the grammar grades or even before they have entered the public
schools. To the childless widow of thirty the time limit of three
hundred weeks may not be particularly unjust, but to the mother of
several young children or to the woman of fifty who has been a house-
keeper for twenty-five years, the restricted period of compensation
merely postpones the day of pauperism.
For inadequate death and disability benefits there is at least the
excuse of low cost to employers, but for insufficient medical, surgical
and hospital care even this pretext fails. The cost of unlimited thera-
peutic relief is, in per cent of payroll, a bagatelle. Yet it is in their
medical provisions that the American compensation laws are most
absurdly deficient. One state requires no medical, surgical or hospital
treatment of injured workmen, five states demand such treatment
for no more than two weeks after the injury, seven limit statutory care
to thirty days, seven to sixty days and six to ninety days. Many states
impose, besides, a monetary limit of $100, $150 or $200. These limits
are to be read in the light of surgical records and surgical charges.
The cost at regular rates of reducing a simple fracture of the arm or
leg is not less than $200 and the cost of a major amputation—to say
486 Labor and Industry [1923
nothing of open operations or of orthopedic surgery—is at least $500.
A badly infected wound, a deep burn, a fracture of any long bone or
a dislocation of any major joint will commonly require attention for
more than sixty days and operative procedure to relieve ankylosis,
adhesions or malformations is frequently needed a year or more after
the injury. The effect of the niggardly medical limitations in our
compensation acts is to deprive thousands of injured workmen of that
therapeutic care which would prevent permanent disability and to
throw tens of thousands into charity wards and free clinics.
In fine, the American benefit scales are grossly inadequate whether
measured by the economic cost of industrial injuries or by the needs
of injured workmen and their families. All the acts profess to be
based upon the principle of occupation risk but all fall much short of
realizing that principle in practice. Even under the most liberal
of our compensation laws, industry bears less than half of the direct
monetary cost of work injuries.
Ezekiel Henry Downey, Workmen’s Compensation (New York, Macmillan,
1924), 146-153 passim.
CHAPTER XXII— CONCERNS OF WOMEN
116. Education of Jane Addams (1900)
BY MARY H. PARKMAN (1017)
Jane Addams has been a prominent figure in social reform and betterment, es-
pecially in Chicago. She recounts something of her own work in No. 120 below.
—For bibliography, see No. 120.
HIS is the story of a girl who early learned to see with the
“inward eye”; she “felt the witchery of the soft blue sky” and
all the wonder of the changing earth, and something of the life about
her melted into her heart and became a part of herself. So it was that
she came to have a “belonging feeling” for all that she saw—fields,
pine woods, mill-stream, birds, trees, and people.
Perhaps little Jane Addams loved trees and people best of all.
Trees were so big and true, with roots ever seeking a firmer hold on
the good brown earth, and branches growing up and ever up, year by
year, turning sunbeams into strength. And people she loved, because
they had in them something of all kinds of life.
There was one special tree that had the friendliest nooks where she
could nestle and dream and plan plays as long as the summer after-
noon. Perhaps one reason that Jane loved this tree was that it re-
minded her of her tall, splendid father.
“You are so big and beautiful, and yet you always have a place for
a little girl—even one who can never be straight and strong,” Jane
whispered, as she put her arms about her tree friend. And when she
crept into the shelter of her father’s arms, she forgot her poor back,
that made her always carry her head weakly on one side when she
longed to fling it back and look the world in the face squarely, exult-
ingly, as her father’s daughter should.
“There is no one so fine or so noble as my father,” Jane would say
to herself as she saw him standing before his Bible-class on Sundays.
Then her cheeks paled, and her big eyes grew wistful. It would be
487
488 Concerns of Women [1900
too bad if people discovered that this frail, crooked child belonged to
him. They would be surprised and pity him, and one must never pity
Father. So it came about that, though it was her dearest joy to walk
by his side clinging to his hand, she stepped over to her uncle, saying
timidly, “ May I walk with you, Uncle James?”
This happened again and again, to the mild astonishment of the
good uncle. At last a day came that made everything different. Jane,
who had gone to town unexpectedly, chanced to meet her father
coming out of a bank on the main street. Smiling gaily and raising
his shining silk hat, he bowed low, as if he were greeting a princess;
and as the shy child smiled back she knew that she had been a very
foolish little girl indeed. Why, of course! Her father made every-
thing that belonged to him all right just because it did belong. He had
strength and power enough for them both. As she walked by his
side after that, it seemed as if the big grasp of the hand that held hers
enfolded all the little tremblings of her days. . . .
Years afterward, when Jane Addams spoke of her childhood, she
said that all her early experiences were directly connected with her
father, and that two incidents stood out with the distinctness of vivid
pictures.
She stood one Sunday morning, in proud possession of a beautiful
new cloak, waiting for her father’s approval. He looked at her a
moment quietly, and then patted her on the shoulder.
“Thy cloak is very pretty, Jane,” said the Quaker father, gravely;
“so much prettier, indeed, than that of the other little girls that I
think thee had better wear thy old one.” Then he added, as he
looked into her puzzled, disappointed eyes, “We can never, perhaps,
make such things as clothes quite fair and right in this hill-and-valley
world; but it is wrong and stupid to let the differences crop out in
things that mean so much more; in school and church, at least, people
should be able to feel that they belong to one family.”
Another day she had gone with her father on an errand into the
poorest quarter of the town. Always before, it had seemed to her
country eyes that the city was a dazzling place of toy- and candy-
shops, smooth streets, and contented houses with sleek lawns. Now
she caught a glimpse of quite another city, with ugly, dingy houses
huddled together, and thin, dirty children standing miserably about
without place or spirit to play.
No. 116] Education of Jane Addams 489
“Tt is dreadful the way all the comfortable, happy people stay off
to themselves,” said Jane. “When I grow up, I shall, of course, have
a big house, but it is not going to be set apart with all the other big
homes; it is going to be right down among the poor, horrid little houses
like these.”
Always after that, when Jane roamed over her prairie playground
or sat dreaming under the Norway pines which had grown from seeds
that her father had scattered in his early, pioneer days, she seemed to
hear something of “the still, sad music of humanity”’ in the voice of
the wind in the tree-tops and in the harmony of her life of varied
interests. For she saw with the inward eye of the heart, and felt the
throb of all life in each vital experience that was hers. It would be
impossible to live apart in pleasant places, enjoying beauty which
others might not share. She must live in the midst of the crowded
ways, and bring to the poor, stifled little homes an ideal of healthier
living. She would study medicine and go as a doctor to the forlorn,
dirty children; but first there would be many things to learn.
It was her dream to go to Smith College, but her father believed
that a small college near her home better fitted one for the life to which
she belonged. . . .
After receiving from her Alma Mater the degree of B. A., she en-
tered the Woman’s Medical Coliege in Philadelphia to prepare for
real work in a real world, but the old spinal trouble soon brought that
chapter to a close. After some months spent in Dr. Weir Mitchell’s
hospital, and a longer time of invalidism, she agreed to follow her
doctor’s pleasant prescription of two years in Europe.
“When I returned I decided to give up my medical course,” said
Jane Addams, “‘partly because I had no real aptitude for scientific
work, and partly because I discovered that there were other genuine
reasons for living among the poor than that of practising medicine
upon them.”
While in London Miss Addams saw much of the life of the great
city from the top of an omnibus. Once she was taken with a number
of tourists to see the spectacle of the Saturday-night auction of fruits
and vegetables to the poor of the East End, and the lurid picture
blotted out all the picturesque impressions, full of pleasant human
interest and historic association, that she had been eagerly enjoying
during this first visit to London town. Always afterward, when she
490 Concerns of Women [1906
closed her eyes, she could see the scene; it seemed as if it would never
leave her. In the flare of the gas-light, which made weird and spectral
the motley, jostling crowd and touched the black shadows it created
into a grotesque semblance of life, she saw wrinkled women, desperate-
looking men, and pale children vying with each other to secure with
their farthings and ha’pennies the vegetables held up by a hoarse,
red-faced auctioneer.
One haggard youth sat on the curb, hungrily devouring the cabbage
that he had succeeded in bidding in. Her sensation-loving companions
on the bus stared with mingled pity and disgust; but the girl who
saw what she looked on with the inward eye of the heart turned away
her face. The poverty that she had before seen had not prepared her
for wretchedness like this.
Mary H. Parkman, The Heart of Hull-House: Jane Addams, in St. Nicholas,
January, 1917 (New York, Century Co.), XLIV, 202-204 passim.
117. Technical Education for Women (1906)
BY PRESIDENT HENRY S. PRITCHETT
Pritchett was President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1900
to 1906; President of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching
since 1906. The cases which he instances here were merely forerunners of the more
modern movement in which women have invaded, in greater or less numbers, almost
every field of endeavor formerly supposed to be open only to men.
OME years ago the head of the chemical department in one of
our best-known schools of technology received a letter from a large
firm engaged in a chemical industry in a Western city. The letter
stated—tt is a very common form of letter to be received at educational
institutions—that the firm would be glad to secure for its chemical
laboratory “the best man in the class of this year.” The reply of the
professor was, “The best man is a woman.” “Very well,” answered
the firm, “we will try your woman.”
The outcome of this correspondence was a very successful career
on the part of the young woman who was the “best man” in her
lasso.
No. 117] Technical Education for Women 491I
The word technical education is used in our country loosely—some-
times to mean the training of a man or woman for any calling which
requires skill. In this sense a cook, a dressmaker or a laundrywoman is
a technically trained person as truly as a chemist, an architect, a
librarian or a trained secretary.
In the more strict sense of the term, however, technical education
is applied to the training of men and women for those professions or
callings which require a fairly good general education as the basis of
preparation for them and for success in them. . . .
I shall try to point out briefly some of the directions in which women
now have opportunities for technical education quite comparable to
those which men receive. In some cases this education is received in
the same institution and side by side with men; and distinct efforts
are being made in some women’s colleges to fit women for professional
work in special directions for which it is believed they have particular
ability.
Ever since our Civil War women have been fitting themselves in
increasing numbers for the work of the teacher. This fact the general
public and the women themselves thoroughly understand, but it
is not so well understood that for nearly the same time the way has
been equally free to a woman who desires to fit herself for any of the
technological callings—such as architecture, the various branches of
engineering, chemistry and biology. The great state universities
which were founded immediately after the war threw open their
courses to women on the same terms as men... .
I know one young woman who had the hardihood to go through a
course in naval architecture and marine engineering, including all
the work in the foundry. On graduation she found a good place in
a large shipyard.
Taking into consideration the fact that such professions as architec-
ture and chemistry have for so long a time been available to women,
it is a little singular that more women have not been attracted to
them. I cannot but think that this is partly due to the greater ease
of preparation for the teacher’s life. To be a chemist or an architect
means first of all a good general education as a foundation, with the
technical training added. This means not only longer and harder
work, but greater expense, and up to the present time these or some
other reasons have served to keep the number of women who enter
492 Concerns of Women [1906
technical callings—save in the one calling of the librarian—insignif-
cant in comparison with those who seek to be teachers.
Even in the exception noted there is a distinction, for the number
of places available to librarians is, after all, limited, and one who
becomes a librarian does not enter into competition with the whole
world in quite the same way as when entering upon architecture or
chemistry—pursuits in which there is practically no limit to the
number of those who may succeed. . . .
A few technical schools are being developed at the present time for
the training of women in technical callings which are supposed to
appeal more directly to womanly qualities and tastes, and which shall
still require a foundation of general education similar to that expected
of the engineer or the chemist. . . .
Here are found not only technical courses for educated women in
chemistry, biology and library work, but four-year courses in such
subjects as household economics, including the economics of house-
building, house sanitation and decoration; a secretarial school in-
tended to fit educated women for the place of secretary to an adminis-
trative officer, whether in public office or in business, and other courses
intended to prepare educated and highly trained experts in certain
departments of our domestic economy which have heretofore been
left to find their experts by chance.
The idea is an interesting and suggestive one. Why should there
not be developed in our highly organized life a class of experts trained
to deal with the problems of household economics, let us say, whether
this is considered from the standpoint of house-building and main-
tenance, or from the standpoint of the efficiency and wholesomeness
of the food supply? .. .
The technical part of the course of four years includes the economics
of house-building and of architecture, the chemistry of food and of
cooking, something of the biology and of the engineering of household
sanitation, and a thorough study of the matter of household values,
dietetics and marketing, including, of course, the ordinary keeping of
accounts.
What sort of a career will such an expert find open to her? One of
the most obvious and important will be the place of an institutional
manager, the manager of a hospital, school or other large institution
in which the domestic interests of a number of persons enter. If
No. 118] Night Work for Women 493
women achieve success in such employment, they will find constantly
widening opportunities as managers of the large and complicated
administration of the houses of the rich.
Another path open to those who undertake such courses will be
found in the teacher’s profession. Still another will be found in the
investigation and improvement of the methods of our domestic
economy, which methods are today crude, wasteful, and but little
affected by the immense progress of modern science.
Henry S. Pritchett, American Women in Industry, in Youths Companion, June
21, 1906 (Boston), 307.
118. Night Work for Women (1910)
BY FLORENCE LUCAS SANVILLE
Miss Sanville, at the time of writing, was Executive Secretary of the Consumers’
League of Philadelphia. She tock an active and important part in securing the
passage of labor legislation to protect women and children in Pennsylvania. As
appears from this account, her recommendations were based on personal experi-
ence.—Bibliography as in No. 115 above.
HE length of a factory girl’s work-day varies from a legal limit
of eight hours in one or two advanced States to ten, eleven, or
twelve in less enlightened communities; and in some States where the
law still fails to protect its women from industrial exploitation the
hours are regulated only by the needs of the industry.
In Pennsylvania, the State which I have studied most closely, the
law prescribes a limit of twelve hours daily and sixty hours weekly
for women over eighteen; for girls under that age the law since Jan-
uary 1, 1910, restricts this further to fifty-eight hours a week and an
average of ten hours a day. In the larger cities of this State the
tendency has been toward a ten-hour day in industries where there is
a sufficient organized demand among the workers to make itself felt.
But in the factories scattered through the villages and small mining-
towns, in which great numbers of young girls are employed—such as
are established by the silk industry—I found in a period of industrial
depression that over half of the mills were working ten and a half to
eleven hours a day. It was especially interesting to discover that,
494 Concerns of Women [1910
with one or two exceptions, all the ten-hour mills were situated in the
zone which had been affected by a successful strike in 1907; and in
many of these factories we were told jubilantly by the girls that
“they used to work sixty hours, but it had been shortened to fifty-
five.”
Eleven hours of work a day means entering the factory at 6.45 in
the morning and leaving it at 6.15 at night, with a half-hour at mid-
day. During a large part of the year it means that for day after day
the sun does not shine upon these hosts of working women and chil-
dren, as they come in the chill of the early morning and return in the
dusk of the evening.
The work which fills these crawling minutes is not absorbing—is
not even interesting; but the few people who are disposed to consider
the dismal tone which covers a life made up of such days, generally
recover their equanimity by the comfortable thought, “But, after all,
they don’t mind it—they’re used to it.”
Now, if my two summers as a silk-mill worker have taught me any-
thing, it has taught me the fallacy of this statement. The appalling
monotony of the day was not the subject of conversation—it was not
even directly referred to that I can recall. But countless little inci-
dents were significant of the attitude of the workers. One of these
occurred on my first day of work. As the minutes of the morning
wore interminably on, a young girl came up to me. her face beaming
its good news. ‘Eleven o’clock—only an hour more!” ‘Then, a
few minutes later, crestfallen and downcast, she returned to say “ Aw—
I looked wrong—it’s only ten!” The disappointment in her voice cut
painfully; all the dull fatigue, the sickening weariness of her unspoken
revolt, were in it.
In fact, I found that the passage of the time becomes the most
absorbing question of the day about an hour after work has com-
menced. In mills where the employer failed to provide a clock I
quickly found that, as the discovered possessor of a watch, my life
became a burden. If I passed down the room for a drink of water
at the sink, I ran the gauntlet of a continuous volley of questions—
“What’s the time, please?” “Let’s see your watch”; while the
operation of drinking from the broken glass was made more difficult
by the little group of questioners who besieged me. The second day
I found it hard not to be impatient, despite the wistful questions and
No. 118] Night Work for Women 495
answering expressions of pleasure or disappointment at my reply;
the third day in self-defence I left my watch at home—although my
penalty was to share the prevailing ignorance of how the day was
passing.
The evils of prolonged hours of labor for girls are intensified when
this labor is performed at night. Night work after a given hour is
prohibited by law for all women in certain industries in a few States;
Massachusetts, for instance, requires that no woman shall work in a
textile factory after 6 P. M. Other States protect all girls up to a
certain age from any night employment—as in Ohio, where no girl
under eighteen years of age is allowed to work after 6 P. M. Many
States have no restrictive legislation on this subject. Pennsylvania,
four years ago, forbade all children under sixteen, with the exception
of boys in certain kinds of occupation to work for wages after 9 P. M.,
and the Legislature of 1909 has included all girls below eighteen years
in this protected class. But this law, which sounds so well on paper,
has up to the present proved but a lame one on account of the loose
requirements of the age certificates; how lame, Miss Cochran and
I saw most clearly when we first applied for work on the night
shift.
As we went into the factory our passage was blocked by a return
stream of girls, and the announcement that “the boiler was burst,
and there was no work that night.” In the outpouring throng, jubilant
at their release, were so many short skirts that it might well have been
a group of schoolgirls, dismissed late by their ceacher. We naturally
fell in with the girls whose way led in the same direction as ours, and
we walked down the railroad track together.
“Yer never worked nights, did yer?” was the first question put
tous. We confessed not. ‘“ Y’ll git more fer it—but it’s terrible hard.”
I asked about the hours and found that they were from 6.30 in the
evening until 6 in the morning, with a half-hour at midnight. “They
keep the doors locked so that no one can’t git out—they didn’t used
ters
A few of the girls left the track to cut across a near-by lot. “We're
goin’ to git some blueberries afore it gits dark,” they called out as they
went away.
Finally all's our escort had dispersed except Lena R——, a thin-shoul-
dered, anzemic-looking girl, with a sweet, bright face. She looked se
490 Concerns of Women [1910
young that I asked her age. “TIl be fourteen in the winter,” she re-
plied, and added that she had been doing night work since she was
eleven.
“‘Gee—but I didn’t think I’d be so lucky tonight; Monday’s always
the worst night to keep awake.
“I hate—hate the mill,” the child exclaimed, hotly. “I never did
no work till my pa got killed in the mine three years ago.”
In Pennsylvania the factorics which employ women at night have,
with the growth of public sentiment in the matter, become compara-
tively rare; and with the more stringent new law, which is already in
operation, the young girls will be more carefully protected. But many
States have neither public sentiment nor legislation on the subject;
and in them the cases of disaster and ruin worked to human life
would, were the toll ever taken, prove appalling.
One of the most striking evils in the physical environment of women
in the factories is the lack of seats, due sometimes to a simple over-
sight, at other times to a definite and most erring—as well as inhuman
—policy of the employer, begotten by an idea that the right to sit
down encourages slow work and laziness. As a result of one of these
two reasons, so very few mills as to be an almost negligible quantity
provide the seats which are required by the Pennsylvania law. In
other factories, while no seats of any kind are visible, there is no rule
against sitting down if anything to sit on can be improvised... .
There are many mills, however, in which sitting was absolutely for-
bidden; in which a rest in the course of an eleven-hour day could be
obtained only at the risk of being caught by the foreman and told
roughly to “get up and watch out for ends.”
The harmful effect of continuous standing upon young and growing
girls, is too well established a fact to require any elaboration. In ad-
dition to the permanent ill effects, much immediate and unnecessary
suffering, especially in hot weather, is inflicted by the prohibition of
sitting. I could always detect the existence of this rule by a glance
at the stocking-feet of the workers, and at the rows of discarded shoes
beneath the frames. For after a few hours the strain upon the swollen
feet becomes intolerable, and one girl after another discards her
shoes!
Another harsh and very common practice of employers is to cover
the lower sashes of the windows with paint, and to fasten them so that
No. 118] Night Work for Women 407
they cannot be raised in hot weather. This is done so that the girls
“don’t waste time looking out.” The utter fallacy of this policy was
made as clearly evident to me as was the rule against sitting down.
In the factories of my acquaintance where these rules are not imposed,
I have never seen their absence taken advantage of. On the contrary,
I have noticed that the girls have an object in getting their work under
way—so that they may win the reward of a few minutes’ rest. And
the keen consciousness which the workers possess of their employer’s
attitude toward them, as expressed in occasional seats and raised
windows, works wholly for his interests—not against them. . .
I have implied that the eating of the midday meal is a very hap-
hazard operation. Only in the rarest cases is a separate lunch-room
provided—in a study of thirty-two factories in a single industry we
found just two that did so. The dinner “hour” is almost universally
a half-hour, so that only the few girls who live practically at the
factory door are enabled to go home. Those who are left have at their
disposal within the mill a seat on the oily floor, or on a bobbin-tray,
in a room which often reeks of ill-smelling raw material. In the sum-
mer it is possible to go out-of-doors—and where the location of the
factory makes it practicable, this is the general rule. But sometimes
this wholesome alternative is not offered.
I recall one factory, situated on a bed of fine coal-dust between two
railroad tracks. The sole choice lay between a seat on the coal-heap
in the blaze of the sun or on the oily floor of the mill, in an atmosphere
where the noise of the machinery gave no possibility of rest. Some of
my most vivid and painful recollections of the noon hour call up
pictures of weary figures crouched on a heap of spools, their heads
sunk between their hands, as if to shut out the clatter of the ma-
chinery—on account of the short lunch period, some factories keep
their machinery in motion, instead of shutting it down—their shoeless
feet on a floor strewn with the remains of their own and other lunch-
eons.
It would be grossly unfair were I to indicate that every mill in which
we worked, or with which we came in contact, was characterized by
such brutal indifference on the part of the management. In some
factories the girls spoke with enthusiasm of the generosity and con-
sideration of their employers. And one mill which we visited in an
effort to obtain work was not only spotlessly clean, but was even
498 Concerns of Women [zorr
brightened by pots of growing plants and great bunches of mountain
laurel placed throughout the work-rooms.
Florence Lucas Sanville, A Woman in the Pennsylvania Silk-Mills, in Harper’s
Monthly Magazine, April, 1910 (New York), 651-662 passim. Reprinted by per-
mission of the author.
119. Is Woman Suffrage Important? (1911)
BY MAX EASTMAN
Eastman is a widely known journalist, and a frequent contributor to liberal pub-
lications. Women were admitted to vote in federal elections by the Nineteenth
Amendment to the Constitution, which became effective in 1920. For an account
of the progress of the campaign by women for the right to vote in various states,
see American Year Book, years 1910-1919, 1923-1920.
HEODORE ROOSEVELT, in a cautious reference to the move-
ment for equal suffrage, recently delivered this opinion:
We hear much about women’s rights. Well, as to that, decent men should be
thinking about women’s rights all the time, and while the men are doing that—
the women should be attending to their duties.
As evading a political issue with a moral platitude, we might pass
that statement by, were it not for what it reveals by implication. It
reveals that Mr. Roosevelt, with probably most of the men of his
profession, still regards the equal-suffrage movement as a clamor for
rights. I believe that not one-fiftieth of the women engaged in that
movement are actuated by a desire to get rights. Probably none of
the men so engaged are actuated by a desire to give them rights. It
may appear true to these men that if any adult woman, with the
established qualifications, desires to vote, it is not their business why
she desires to vote, it is unjust to deny her the opportunity. They
may believe that as an ambitious republic we can ill afford, either for
what we call practical reasons or for reasons of romantic sentiment,
to deny a direct justice to a number of hundred thousand people who
vehemently ask for it. They may be unable—even as politicians—to
refrain from thinking about women’s rights. But such thoughts are
not the heart of their enthusiasm. The heart of their enthusiasm is
No. 119] Is Woman Suffrage Important? 499
not an acknowledgment that equal suffrage is abstractly right or just,
but a conviction that it is important... .
Let me say at the start that we do not look to women’s votes for the
purification and moral elevation of the body politic. That is a lovely
hope, transmitted to us in its classic form, I believe, by George William
Curtis. “I am asked,” he exclaims, “would you drag women down into
the mire of politics? No, sir, I would have them lift us out of it.”
But we are not much stirred by the hope of such miracles in this
day. We are more scientific than to judge women in general by the
one we have in our romantic eye. We look round in the city and the
country, and we see who the men are and who the women are; and
we conclude that neither sex has exclusive hold of the reins, or spurs,
of morality. ...
The sexes are more idealistic in what they do together than in what
they do apart. For this reason the coming of women—or the coming,
let us say, of families—into politics, will perhaps bring a certain
benefit other than what you might estimate by counting the wise or
virtuous women’s votes. It will make impossible, for instance, that
state of conscience prevalent among male politicians, who go into the
service of the State with the happy feeling that they have left their
virtues at home in the safe-keeping of their wives and daughters.
Men throw the innocence of their women folk as a sop to God, and
go about the devil’s business. But it may be doubted whether God
or any one else was ever satisfied with innocence as a substitute for
virtue active in the world. I could never see the value of preserved
innocence. It is perfectly possible that our republic will be damned
to moral destruction, men and women together, and it is possible
that it will be saved to great usefulness, but certainly if it is saved it
will be saved not because of the number of cloistered innacents it
contains within its boundaries, but because of the number of effective
human beings who save it. Any measure, therefore, will do well,
which tends to reduce the number of those males who think that an
ineffectual wife can do the being good for the whole family.
Especially it will do well if it reduces the number of such men in
public affairs, where the lack of those high standards that we set for
ourselves in our homes is lamentably apparent. “He is such a good
man in his family!” we say of our disgraced representative. Perhaps,
if we do not waste our time trying to make him good outside his family,
500 Concerns of Women [1911
but allow his family and its acquaintance with him to extend into the
sphere of his political activity, he will be good there too, or else no-
where, and there will be no doubt about it. He will at least realize
the importance of honor in public service, and no longer be able to
return home and think he is better than his acts... .
The relegating of women to a life of futile or neurotic sainthood,
with exclusive charge of the goodness of the community and nothing
to do with the community’s behavior, has been a great foolishness at
the bottom of our social habits. Of this ancient practice and the quite
recent idealization of it, of the damage it has done to men and women
and children, no history can give the account. Nor is it easy to estab-
lish a sense of it in an age which is permeated by the sentiments of a
degenerate feudalism. It may awake the sane and the heroic in us,
however, to recall the pagan ideal of Plato. He says, in the seventh
book of the laws:
The legislator ought to be whole and perfect, and not half a man only. He
ought not to let the female sex live softly and waste money and have no order of
life, while he takes the utmost care of the male sex, and leaves half of life only
blessed with happiness when he might have made the whole state happy.
Two truths that will be news to many after two thousand years.
are contained in that sentence. First, that it is just as important for
women to be happy as for men; and, second, that true happiness for
the best spirits of either sex, does not consist in living softly and wast-
ing money and having no order of life, but in regulated purpose and
achievement. . .
. . . The purpose of life is that it be greatly lived, and it can be
greatly lived only by great characters. Yet it can be shown, upon a
practical demand, for what special purposes we need women of great
spirit.
We need them, first, for the cultivation of a certain gentle humility
and good sense in their husbands. . . . To idolize that which is held
inferior in power and wisdom, because it excels in innocence of the
actual world, is to commit the characteristic folly of decadence. Surely
if man as a lover of women is to become an equable union of the tender
and heroic, he will need to be both subdued and elevated by his love.
He will not be brought to such perfection by the constant purveyal
of privileges to a supposedly inferior being; nor will he be brought
there by the discipline of a woman who wields her privilege with
No. 119] Is Woman Suffrage Important? 501
cunning or thunder, and under a system of “female subjection” rules
the household. No, he will come into that perfection, if at all, in the
company of a woman so developed as naturally to believe that she
will be treated as an equal.
. . . Who can think that intellectual divergence, disagreement pon
a great public question, could disrupt a family worth holding to-
gether? On the contrary, nothing save a community of great interests,
agreeing and disagreeing, can revive a fading romance. When we
have made matrimony synonymous with a high and equal comrade-
ship, we shall have done the one thing that we can do to rescue those
families which are the tottering corner-stones of society. And that
we cannot do until men and women are both grown up.
A greater service of the developed woman, however, will be her
service in motherhood. For we are in extreme need of mothers that
have the wisdom of experience. . . . Keep your mothers in a state
of invalid remoteness from genuine life, and who is to arm the young
with wise virtue? Are their mothers only to suckle them, and then
for their education pass them over to some one who knows life? For
to educate a child is to lead him out into the world of his experience;
it is not to propel him with ignorant admonitions from the door. A
million lives wrecked at the off-go can bear witness to the failure of
that method. I think that the best thing you could add to the mothers
of posterity is a little of the rough sagacity and humor of public affairs.
Such are the great reasons for making the sexes equal in politics;
such have been the reasons ever since the question was broached in
the age of Pericles. It is not an issue to be answered by an appeal to
chivalry, which is but a perfection of 1nanners among the people of
noble leisure; the need is deeper and more universal than that. Nor
is it at its best a demand for justice upon the part of citizens unrec-
ognized. Nor is it a plan to prevent corrupt practices in politics, or
instil into the people’s representatives any virtue other than the
virtue of representing the whole people. That is the aim of those
who advocate that we extend the suffrage to women. It is an act
demanded by the ideal principle to the proof of which our govern-
ment is devoted. It is, moreover, a heroic step that we can take with
nature in the evolution of a symmetrical race.
Max Eastman, in North American Review (New York, 1911), CXCIII, 60-71
passim. Reprinted by permission of the author.
502 Concerns of Women [1914
120. Larger Aspects of the Woman’s Movement (1914)
BY JANE ADDAMS
For Jane Addams, see No. 116 above.—Her published books include Twenty
Years at Hull House (1910); Women at The Hague (1915); Spirit of Youth and The
City Streets (1917); Peace and Bread in Time of War (1922); The Long Road of
Woman’s Memory (1917); Democracy and Social Ethics (1902).
ERHAPS no presentation of history is so difficult as that which
treats of the growth of a new consciousness; but assuming that
the historic review, now so universal in the field of social judgment
and investigation, is applicable to any current development, I have
ventured to apply it to that disturbing manifestation called the
“votes-for-women”’ movement, which at the present moment is not
only the centre of hot debate but, unhappily, also of conduct which
in the minds of many is most unseemly. .. .
To begin then with the world-wide aspect of the votes-for-women
movement—that there may be nothing more petty about us than
the theme itself imposes—it is possible to make certain classifications
of underlying trends, which, while not always clear, and sometimes
overlapping, are yet international in their manifestations.
First: the movement is obviously a part of that evolutionary con-
ception of self-government which has been slowly developing through
the centuries. For the simple reason that self-government must ever
be built up anew in relation to changing experiences, its history is
largely a record of new human interests which have become the object
of governmental action, and of the incorporation into the body politic
of the classes representing those interests. As the governing classes
have been enlarged by the enfranchisement of one body of men after
another, government itself has not only become enriched through new
human interests, but at the same time it has become further democra-
tized through the accession of the new classes representing those in-
terests. The two propositions are complementary. . . .
In certain respects the insistence of women for political expression,
which characterizes the opening years of the twentieth century, bears
an analogy to their industrial experiences in the early part of the nine-
teenth century, when the textile industries were taken out of private
No. 120] Larger Aspects of the Woman’s Movement 503
houses and organized as factory enterprises. . . . It is hard to see
now how the basic industry of England could have been developed
without the thousands of women and girls who in spite of public
opprobrium followed their old occupations.
But is it not obvious that, as industrial changes took spinning out
of private houses, so political changes are taking out of the home
humanitarian activities, not to mention the teaching of children?
The aged poor of a community who were formerly cared for in the
houses of distant relatives or old neighbors, the sick who were nursed
night and day by kindly friends and acquaintances taking turn and
turn about, are now housed in large infirmaries and in hospitals built
and supported by the taxpayers’ money. The woman who wishes
to be a teacher or a nurse takes her training in public institutions, as
she formerly went to the factory to spin, not because she wishes pri-
marily to leave home but because her work has been transferred. . . .
Studied from a second aspect, the “votes-for-women’’ movement
is doubtless one result of the fundamental change which is taking
place in the conception of politics analogous to the changes in the
basic notions in education, criminology, and political economy.
Graham Wallas, in his very interesting book Human Nature in Pol-
itics, points out that, while educators have learned to study child
psychology so that teachers understand children rather than manage
schools, and that while jurists are ceasing to classify offenders solely
on the basis of their crimes and are beginning to regard them as human
beings, politicians have not yet learned to apply social psychology
to the field of political action. The individual voter is still regarded
as a party adjunct, a useful unit for party organization exactly as
the old economist long considered the “economic man” as a sort of
lone wolf impelled by no other motive than the desire for food. Quite
as the science of political economy made little progress until it got
rid of that fiction and looked at men as they really exist, each a bundle
of complicated and overlapping motives, so politicians are making
many blunders because their action is not founded upon the genuine
facts of human existence. They have failed to observe how rapidly
the materials and methods of political life are changing, that the law
courts and legislature are struggling desperately to meet modern
demands with conceptions of property and authority and duty founded
upon the rude compromises made centuries ago, that there is obvious
504 Concerns of Women [1914
need for bolder arrangements and interactions in the distribution of
employment, education, invention. Such changes can only come
about if they are carried on with that same spirit of free thinking and
outspoken publication that has won in the field of natural science.
An able man long ago pointed out that the qualities most valuable
in an electorate are social sympathies and a sense of justice, then
openness and plainness of character, lastly habits of action and a
practical knowledge of social misery. Woman’s value to the modern
states, which constantly are forced to consider social reforms, lies
in the fact that statesmen at the present moment are attempting to
translate the new social sympathy into political action.
The contemporary efforts to extend the principles of social insurance
to illness in several European states, and to control unemployment
through national labor exchanges, are not so much social reforms as
titanic pieces of social engineering in which the judgment of women
is most necessary. Governmental commissions everywhere take
woman’s testimony as to legislation for better housing, for public
health and education, for the care of dependents, and many other
remedial measures, because it is obviously a perilous business to turn
over delicate social experiments to men who have remained quite un-
touched by social compunctions and who have been elected to their
legislative positions solely upon the old political issues. Certainly
under this new conception of politics it is much easier to legislate
for those human beings of whose condition the electorate are “vividly
aware,” to use a favorite phrase of Professor James. .. .
Women have discovered that the unrepresented are always liable
to be given what they do not need by legislators who wish merely
to placate them; a child labor law exempts street trades, the most
dangerous of all trades tc a child’s morals; a law releasing mothers
from petty industry that they may rear worthy children provides a
pension so inadequate that over-burdened women must continue to
neglect their young in order to feed them.
More than one woman, while waiting in the lobby for an opportunity
to persuade recalcitrant law-makers in regard to a legislative measure,
has had ample time to regret that she had no vote by which to select
the men upon whom her social reform had become so absolutely
dependent. Such a woman can even recall some cherished project
which has been so modified by uninformed legislation during the
No. 120] Larger Aspects of the Woman’s Movement 505
process of legal enactment that the law finally passed injured the very
people it was meant to protect. . .
The third trend in the feminist movement might be called evolu-
tionary rather than historic, if indeed the two may be separated.
In this trend the very earliest stage is doubtless represented by those
women of Asia who are making their first struggle against the tradi-
tional bondages and customs whose roots creep back into primitive
times, and whose efforts are yet in that incipient and unorganized
state which characterized the efforts of western women a hundred
years ago. As a whole, this trend is connected with contemporary
revolutions carried on by men demanding a direct representation in
governments which at present ignore them. The most striking ex-
ample, perhaps, is Russia, where women have taken an active part
in the recently established constitutional government. Twenty-one
of them at the present moment are sitting as members in the Finnish
Parliament. Due to that inveterate tendency of revolutionists to in-
corporate into their program the most advanced features of existing
governments, the demand for woman’s political representation has
reached even Mohammedan countries, such as Persia and Turkey,
where it is directly opposed to their religious teaching. Both China
and Siam, in spite of eastern customs, have given women a political
status in their new constitutions by extending to certain classes of
them the right of suffrage. . . .
The final impression of a review of this movement we have ventured
to consider is of a cause growing, pushing, and developing in all the
nations upon the face of the earth, representing new experiences and
untrammeled hopes. It is everywhere surprisingly spontaneous and
universal. It not only appears simultaneously in various nations in
both hemispheres, but manifests itself in widely separated groups
within the same nation, embracing the smart set and the hard driven
working woman; sometimes the movement is sectarian and dogmatic,
at others philosophic and grandiloquent; it may be amorphous and
sporadic, or carefully organized and consciously directed; but it is
always vital and is constantly becoming more widespread.
Jane Addams, in Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
(Philadelphia, November, 1914), LVI, 1-8 passim.
Radish
NATIONAL LEADERS
CHAPTER XXIII— AMERICAN PUBLIC MEN
121. John Hay, a Great Secretary of State (1900)
BY HENRY MACFARLAND
See also No. 24 above, taken from Hay’s Diary.—Bibliography: William Roscoe
Thayer, The Life and Letters of John Hay. For brief sketches of the personalities
of national political figures, see C. W. Gilbert, The Mirrors of Washington, Behind
the Mirrors; E. G. Lowry, Washington Close-Ups; William Allen White, Masks in
a Pageant.
NTIL President McKinley, at the beginning of his adminis-
tration, appointed Colonel Hay ambassador to Great Britain,
he had not been conspicuous in public life for fifteen years. But that
was because, always unostentatious, and indeed retiring, he had
avoided prominence, declined public office, and kept out of the news-
papers. For during all those years, besides working in literature and
meeting all social demands especially with a gracious hospitality,
Colonel Hay was a power in politics, more, rather than less, important
because he worked chiefly behind the scenes. He appeared from
time to time on the Republican stump to make speeches notable for
their cleverness, clearness, and cogency, but he was never conspicuous
in conventions or hotel lobbies, at the White House, the Capitol,
or at the Cabinet offices. But in the inner councils of the Republican
party his influence was potent, and the party managers knew how
freely he gave his time, his efforts, and his money for the success of his
principles and candidates. President McKinley was Jong his candidate
for the Presidency, and he thoroughly appreciated all that Colonel
500
No. 121] John Hay, a Great Secretary of State 507
Hay did for him, and also the unusual fitness of Colonel Hay for public
service. He would have made Colonel Hay Secretary of State at the
beginning of his administration if he had not been constrained by
circumstances to transfer Senator Sherman to the State Department.
It was well, however, both for Colonel Hay and the administration,
that he was sent just at that time as ambassador to Great Britain,
for his public and private services there were of high order and great
importance. In that propitious hour, when the interests of both
countries drew them closer together to their mutual advantage, he
did all that the American ambassador could do to promote the friend-
liest relations and to secure our share of the benefits. The policy
of benevolent neutrality which England followed to our advantage
in the Spanish war was promoted by his efforts, and he utilized its
influence in every possible way. Colonel and Mrs. Hay, blessed with
fine social gifts and the means to make them effective, made the best
impression on English society. Colonel Hay’s public addresses were
models of their kind and examples of propriety which might well be
followed by all our ambassadors. Colonel Hay made personal friends
of most of the leading men of England, and through the opportunities
of the embassy gained the friendship of many continental statesmen.
When he returned to become Secretary of State, after less than
eighteen months’ service, he left behind him a shining reputation,
and he brought back invaluable knowledge of the statecraft of every
court in Europe.
Beginning his service as Secretary of State with this wealth of in-
formation, which many of his predecessors did not have after four
years’ service at the head of the Department and having a perfect
acquaintance with the methods, traditions, and archives of the Depart-
ment, and a thorough knowledge of the diplomatic corps in Washing-
ton, as well as of our leading public men, Colonel Hay came fully
equipped to his latest and greatest opportunity and did not have to
lose time in preparing to work. ... The new Secretary of State
was (and is) a firm believer in Washington’s teaching against entan-
gling foreign alliances. . . . He is equally a believer in the Monroe
Doctrine and has repeatedly made this thoroughly understood in the
European capitals. But while he has been careful to keep this country
out of the quarrels of Europe and to keep Europe from interfering
politically with the affairs of this continent, he has not hesitated to
508 American Public Men [1900
utilize, in temporary conference and coöperation, the advice and as-
sistance of any nation in the promotion of our interests, now spread
world-wide. He has considered these interests as interrelated, and
therefore the diplomacy of the State Department under his direction
has treated our foreign affairs as a whole. There has been marked
unity as well as unusual skillfulness, vigor, and tactfulness in it, but
its chief characteristic has been its sagacious foresight.
His great achievement will appear in history as the maintenance
of the “open door” in China and the consequent postponement, if
not prevention, of the threatened dismemberment of that empire,
which will probably be considered one of the greatest achievements
ever won by our diplomacy. It has already made a great impression
upon all the governments of the world and has already had important
results. When Colonel Hay took the portfolio of State, fifteen months
ago, the peace commission had not begun the treaty of Paris with
Spain, and all Europe was wondering what the United States would
do with its new influence in the affairs of nations, then fully recognized
as a result of its unexpected demonstration of power in the Spanish
war. The ablest English and continental statesmen then regarded
the retention of the Philippines by the United States as inevitable,
which most American statesmen did not see, and, looking beyond,
faced the larger question, also hidden from most American states-
men, of what this would mean in the future of China and all the
Orient. ... He early took steps toward securing from the great
powers, who had already mapped out a division of the Chinese coast
among themselves, a formal recognition of our right to the “open
door” under our commercial treaties with China. They realized, of
course, that this meant that they could not appropriate to themselves
the markets of China as they had already planned to do. Russia,
France, and Germany, who were the most aggressive in these designs,
also realized that they could not afford to ignore or to offend the
United States, the new power of the world, with sovereignty over the
Philippines, especially as Great Britain’s interest in the matter lay
rather with the United States than with them, and Japan, the new
power of the Orient, ambitious to control in China and Korea, was
ready to lend her aid to the United States. So verbal assurances that
the “open door” should be maintained in China were given by all
the powers interested. This did not content Secretary Hay, and he
No. 121] John Hay, a Great Secretary of State 509
asked for similar assurances in writing. Some of the powers demurred,
and so showed that the written assurances were needed. They in-
timated that instead of them they would like to give the United
States an equal slice of the territory of China. Secretary Hay made
them understand that the United States would not participate in the
division of China and must have the written guarantees of the “open
door.” When they realized that he meant just what he said they
promised to send the assurances in writing. The United States,
acting simply for herself and the conservation of her rights under
treaties with China, has not only fully protected them, to the incal-
culable advantage of the United States and her commerce, but has
preserved the integrity of China’s territory. Secretary Hay’s diplo-
macy maintained the peace of nations by preventing any concerted
attack upon Great Britain during her Transvaal trouble, and, in-
directly, promoted the new understanding between Great Britain and
Germany which works powerfully to the same end and also to the
advancement of our interests in the East... .
Secretary Hay is not a club man, although he belongs to fashion-
able clubs in Washington and elsewhere, but finds his chief happiness
in his home. He is a great pedestrian and a familiar figure on the
streets of Washington, rather short and sturdy in build, walking
briskly with the swing of youth, and always perfectly dressed. He has
a fine, strong face with keen, dark eyes, which demand eyeglasses,
and black hair and bushy beard turning gray.
He is so young for his years, so agile and virile in mind and body
that his friends feel that he may be elected President after President
McKinley finishes his second term, if he does not become President
before.
Henry Macfarland, Secretary John Hay, in Review of Reviews (January, 1900),
XXI, 38-41 passim.
510 American Public Men [1916
t22. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Eminent Jurist (1916)
BY PROFESSOR FELIX FRANKFURTER
Frankfurter, a leader of liberal thought, is a professor in the Harvard Law School.
He is especially concerned with matters of constitutional interpretation and federal
control of business and transportation. On Holmes, see also No. ror above. For
an extract from a characteristic opinion by Holmes, see No. 112 above.
R. JUSTICE HOLMES’S influence has been steady and con-
sistent and growing. His opinions form a coherent body of
constitutional law, and their effect upon the development of the law
is the outstanding characteristic of constitutional history in the last
decade. .
Mr. Justice Holmes has recalled us to the traditions of Marshall,
that it zs a Constitution we are expounding, and not a detached docu-
ment inviting scholastic dialectics. To him the Constitution is a means
of ordering the life of a young nation, having its roots in the past—
“continuity with the past is not a duty but a necessity’’—and in-
tended for the unknown future. Intentionally, therefore, it was
bounded with outlines not sharp and contemporary, but permitting
of increasing definiteness through experience. . .
He has ever been keenly conscious of the delicacy involved in re-
viewing other men’s judgment not as to its wisdom but as to their
right to entertain the reasonableness of its wisdom. We touch here
the most sensitive spot in our constitutional system: that its successful
working calls for minds of extraordinary intellectual disinterestedness
and penetration lest limitations in personal experience and imagina-
tion be interpreted, however conscientiously or unconsciously, as
constitutional limitation. .
We are in a field where general principles are recognized but settle
few controversies. Claim or denial of governmental power, of “in-
dividual rights,” reveal themselves not as logical antitheses, but as
demands of clashing “rights,” of matters of more or less, of questions
Of LegTeG te. Ss
Thus, while Mr. Justice Holmes has expounded the philosophy of
differences of degree and applied it in a variety of cases, he has been
alert to demand a telling difference upon which a distinction can be
No. 122] Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jurist 511
predicated. A neat instance is his dissenting opinion in Haddock v.
Haddock.
I am the last man in the world to quarrel with a distinction simply because
it is one of degree. Most distinctions, in my opinion, are of that sort, and none
are the worse for it. But the line which is drawn must be justified by the fact that
it is a little nearer than the nearest opposing case to one pole of an admitted an-
tithesis. When a crime is made burglary by the fact that it was committed thirty
seconds after one hour after sunset, ascertained according to mean time in the
place of the act, to take an example from Massachusetts, the act is a little nearer
to midnight than if it had been committed one minute earlier, and no one denies
that there is a difference between night and day. The fixing of a point when day
ends is made inevitable by the admission of that difference. But I can find no
basis for giving a greater jurisdiction to the courts of the husband’s domicile when
the married pair happens to have resided there a month, even if with intent to
make it a permanent abode, than if they had not lived there at all.
This, in brief, is the attitude in which and the technique with which
Mr. Justice Holmes approaches the solution of specific questions in
the two great active fields of constitutional law: the Commerce Clause
and the Fourteenth Amendment.
Just as the needs of commerce among the several states furnished
the great centripetal force in the establishment of the Nation, so the
Commerce Clause has now become the most important nationalizing
agency of the Federal Government. Mr. Justice Holmes has at once
applied this power with unimpaired depth and breadth, and affirmed
the true basis of its need to-day no less than in 1789.
I do not think the United States would come to an end if we lost our power to
declare an Act of Congress void. I do think the Union would be imperiled if we
could not make that declaration as to the laws of the several States. For one in
my place sees how often a local policy prevails with those who are not trained to
national views, and how often action is taken that embodies what the Commerce
Clause was meant to end.
The extension of interstate commerce through modern inventions,
the overwhelming field which it has absorbed, are obvious. Logically,
there is no limit to the interrelation of national commerce and the
activities of men in the separate States. But the main ends of our
dual system of States and Nation here, too, call for adjustment, and
logic cannot hold sterile sway.
In modern societies every part is related so organically to every other, that
what affects any portion must be felt more or less by all the rest. Therefore, un-
less everything is to be forbidden and legislation is to come to a stop, it is not enough
512 American Public Men [1916
to show that, in the working of a statute, there is some tendency, logically dis-
cernible, to interfere with commerce or existing contracts.
Therefore distinctions have to be made and “even nice distinctions
are to be expected.” But the Federal power must be dominantly
left unimpaired and a State cannot defeat the withdrawal of national
commerce from State tampering “by invoking the convenient apolo-
getics of the police power.” . .
His general attitude towards the Fourteenth Amendment at once
reflects his whole point of view towards constitutional interpretation
and is a clue to the hundreds of opinions in which it is applied. In
all the variety of cases the opinions of Mr. Justice Holmes show the
same realism, the same refusal to defeat life by formal logic, the same
regard for local needs and local habits, the same deference to local
knowledge. He recognizes that government necessarily means experi-
mentation; and while the very essence of constitutional limitations
is to confine the area of experimentation, the limitations are not self-
defining, and they were intended to permit government. Necessarily,
therefore, the door was not meant to be closed to trial and error.
“Constitutional law, like any other mortal contrivance, has to take
Some clancese, oat.
In industrial and social legislation the fighting, of course, has been
around the conception of “liberty.” Mr. Justice Holmes has been
unswerving in his resistance to any doctrinaire interpretation. The
effectiveness of his fight lies mostly in the acuteness with which he
has disclosed when a claim is doctrinaire. Perception of the forces of
modern society and persistent study of economics have enabled him
to translate large words in terms of the realities of existence. . . .
What makes these opinions significant beyond their immediate
expression is that they come from a man who, as a judge, enforces
statutes based upon economic theories which he does not share, and
of whose efficacy in action he is sceptical. The judicial function here
finds its highest exercise.
In the regulation of utilities we have an excellent illustration of the
need of balancing interests and the delicacy of the task. Mr. Justice
Holmes has both laid down the general consideration and illustrated
their application. . , .
Only the shallow would attempt to put Mr. Justice Holmes in
the shallow pigeonholes of classification. He has been imaginatively
No. 122] Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jurist 513
regardful of the sensibilities of the States, particularly in State con-
troversies, and he has shown every deference, even as a matter of
“equitable fitness or propriety,” to agencies of the States. In thus
manifesting every rightful regard for self-reliant individual States,
he to that extent only the more sought to maintain, so far as the judi-
ciary plays a part, the full vigor of our dual system. From his opinions
there emerges a conception of a Nation adequate to its great national
duties and consisting of confederate States, in their turn possessed of
dignity and power available for the diverse uses of civilized people.
In their impact and sweep and fertile freshness, the opinions have
been a superbly harmonious vehicle for the views which they embody.
It all seems so easy,—brilliant birds pulled from the magician’s sleeve.
It is the delusive ease of great effort and great art. He has told us
that in deciding cases “one has to try to strike the jugular,” and his
aim is sure. He has attained it, as only superlative work, no matter
how great the genius, can be attained. ‘The eternal effort of an art,
even the art of writing legal decisions, is to omit all but the essentials.
‘The point of contact’ is the formula, the place where the boy got
his finger pinched; the rest of the machinery doesn’t matter.” So we
see nothing of the detailed draughtsmanship. We get, like Corot’s
pictures, “magisterial summaries.”
We get more: we get the man. Law ever has been for him one of the
forces of life, a part of it and contributing to it. Back of his approach
to an obscure statute from Oklahoma or Maine we catch a glimpse
of his approach to life. That glimpse each must get and treasure for
his own.
Felix Frankfurter, Constitutional Opinions of Justice Holmes, in Harvard Law
Review (April, 1916), XXIX, 684-699 passim.
514 American Public Men [z917
123. Joseph H. Choate, Counsellor and Ambassador (1917)
BY EX-SECRETARY ELIHU ROOT
See No. 5r above. For one aspect of Root’s work, see Joseph H. Choate, The
Two Hague Conferences.
R. CHOATE’S service in the foreign affairs of the country
was of the highest value. When he was appointed Ambassador
from the United States to Great Britain at the age of sixty-seven,
there were several very serious and difficult questions between the
two countries, which required to be treated with great skill and judg-
ment if serious controversy was to be prevented. The very positive
defiance of Great Britain in Mr. Cleveland’s Venezuela message of
December, 1895, and the general expression of American feeling in
support of that defiance, had created an atmosphere not altogether
favorable to mutual concessions. This had been modified, but not
wholly dispelled, by Great Britain’s discouragement of European
intervention during our war with Spain, and by the wisdom and good
sense of Mr. Hay and President McKinley on the one side and Lord
Salisbury on the other during the first two years of the McKinley
Administration. . .
When Mr. Choate was appointed, the United States had just reached
a full realization of the necessity of a canal across the Central American
Isthmus under American control. We were forced to that realization
by the result of the war with Spain, the cession of Porto Rico, and the
responsibility for the protection of Cuba; by the growth of population
and commerce on the Pacific Coast; by the acquisition of Hawaii and
the Philippines; by the appearance on the horizon of grave questions
of international policy toward the Far East. It was necessary for
our internal commerce and our naval protection that our Atlantic
and Pacific coasts should be united by a ship canal under control;
but the way was blocked by the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty of 1850,
under which the United States and Great Britain had agreed that any
such canal should be practically under a partnership of the two nations.
The object could not be attained while that Treaty stood. Under
the wise and highly competent diplomacy of Mr. Choate in London
and Mr. Hay in Washington the partnership was abandoned, and the
obstacle of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty was removed upon the sole
No. 123] Joseph Choate, Counsellor, Ambassador STS
condition of equal treatment to the commerce of the world in the canal
to be built and controlled by the United States.
When Mr. Choate went to London, China seemed to be on the verge
of partition by the great Powers, ho had established naval and mili-
tary stations and spheres of influence i in Chinese territory, and who,
mutually suspicious, were reaching out, each for more control, in
order to prevent other powers from acquiring it. There was no escape
from partition, except by stopping that process. With partition the
door for American trade with China would be closed, and the oppor-
tunity of China for liberty and self-government would disappear.
America alone was free from suspicion, and from the vantage-ground
Mr. Hay undertook to stop the process of partition by proposing a
universal agreement on the principle of the open door. Without the
agreement of Great Britain effort would have been useless. It fell to
Mr. Choate to secure that agreement from the British Government,
and it was given cheerfully and ungrudgingly, and the principle of the
open door was established in China... .
. There were many other important things done—and well done
—during his six years of service. Let no one suppose that results in
the negotiation of such affairs come of themselves. They require long
and patient labor, quick perception, judgment of character, tact, skill,
and wisdom. Incompetency is fatal.
His service in direct relation to the people of Great Britain was
perhaps even greater than his service in negotiation with the British
Government. The most important thing in the relations between
modern democracies is the feeling of two peoples toward each other.
If they like each other and trust each other, any question can be
settled. He carried to Great Britain the same readiness for service,
the same social unselfishness, the same cheerful, brilliant, and interest-
ing qualities as a public speaker, which had made him so admired and
beloved at home. He accepted countless invitations to attend count-
less banquets and corner-stone layings, and openings of institutions,
and unveilings, and celebrations, and SOLD of all kinds, and to
make countless speeches.
Ambassadorial dignity did not mjure hind in the slightest degree.
He must have been wearied often, but he was never abated, for he
really interested himself in the affairs and the characters of the people.
He talked to them in a sympathetic way about thei affairs, and he
516 American Public Men [1917
told them simply and interestingly about the great men of our history
and what Americans were doing, and thinking, and feeling. He was
clever and stimulating, and enveloped his serious thought there as
he did here with a mantle of humor and fun. He must have kept our
British cousins guessing for a while at first, but they soon came to
know him, and to understand him with undiluted enjoyment... .
The selection of Mr. Choate as an Ambassador Extraordinary at
the head of the American Delegation to the Second Hague Conference
in 1907 followed naturally upon his career at home and in Great
Britain. No other man in the United States had shown himself pos-
sessed in so high a degree of so many of the qualities necessary for that
service. He had learning without pedantry, power of expression which
never sacrificed accuracy to rhetoric, or sense to sound, courage saved
from rashness by quick perception and long experience, the lawyer’s
point of view and the statesman’s point of view, the technique of
forensic debate, and the technique of diplomatic intercourse. His
brilliant success in the Embassy to Great Britain and the high position
which he had acquired there had made his great reputation known to
the public men of Europe, who at that time ordinarily knew little
and cared less about American lawyers, so that he was able to perform
his duties at The Hague with great personal prestige and authority.
His work at The Hague fully met the expectations of his Govern-
ment, and fully justified his selection, for he became one of the great
leaders of the Conference and held a commanding position in its
deliberations, and under him the whole American delegation worked
together with admirable team play. .. .
But the greatest of all the services which Mr. Choate rendered to
his country in his long and useful life was at the close, when he realized
—as he did very soon after the beginning of the war—that the inde-
pendence and liberty of the United States were threatened less imme-
diately but no less certainly than those of England and France, by the
German grasp for military dominion. With all the vigor and strong
conviction of youth he abandoned the comfortable leisure to which
the ninth decade of his life entitled him, and threw himself with en-
thusiasm into the task of making his countrymen see as he saw the
certain dangers that lay before them, and the duty that confronted
them to rouse themselves and act, for the preservation of their own
liberties and the liberties of the world. With voice and pen he pressed
No. 123] Joseph Choate, Counsellor, Ambassador iy
his appeal with all the authority of his great reputation, with the
wisdom of his experience, the power of an intellect undimmed, of a
heart still warm, with the intensity of a great and living patriotism.
When that appeal and the appeal of others who thought and felt
with him were answered, and the great decision was made that com-
mitted a slowly awakening people to struggle and sacrifice for the
preservation of the institutions which he had defended all his life, a
great relief and joy possessed him. He was made Chairman of the
New York Committee for the reception of the Commissions from
England and France under Balfour and Viviani and Marshal Joffre,
who came to America after the declaration of war to confirm and help
to make immediately practical and effective the new league of Democ-
racy for the war against autocracy. It was his part to lead the people
of his own City in a reception of our new allies, so generous and warm-
hearted as to strike the imagination of the people of all three countries.
He met the French Commission and then the British Commission.
He welcomed them in our behalf with gracious and impressive hospi-
tality. He rode with them through the streets thronged with cheering
crowds, and shared with them the respect and homage accorded to
the significant and represented figures of that great and unique occa-
sion. He attended all the receptions and banquets, and public and
private entertainments, by day and by night, which attended their
visits. Daily, and sometimes twice and sometimes three times a day,
he made public addresses, appropriate and dignified, and full of in-
terest and deep feeling. His adequate representation filled his own
people with pride, and aroused their patriotism and their noblest
qualities, and he impressed our guests with confidence and satisfaction.
When the final service of the crowded week was finished, at the
Cathedral of St. John the Divine, on Sunday, the thirteenth of May,
he bade Mr. Balfour good-bye with the words “Remember, we meet
again to celebrate the victory”; and with stout and cheerful heart he
bore the burden of his years to his home, to meet the physical reaction
that he had been warned was inevitable; and in a few hours the great
heart filled with the impulses of noble service and with love of country,
and liberty, and justice, ceased to beat. He had given his life for his
country.
Elihu Root, Address before the New York City Bar Association, Dec. 20, 1917, in
Men and Policies (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1924), 35-43 passim.
518 American Public Men [1921
124. William S. Sims, Earnest Admiral (1921)
BY EDWARD G. LOWRY
Lowry is a Washington journalist and correspondent. For accounts of some
naval affairs in which Sims played a part, see bibliography with No. 187 below.
IKE some of Admiral Sims’s close associates in the navy, I
do not take much stock in his so-called “indiscretions.” To
me they have always seemed more like maturely deliberated utter-
ances. I do not think he goes off at half-cock. He knows very well
what he is doing. He exercises when he sees fit, and thinks a need
exists, his quality of being unafraid. He has grown in his own stature
and in public esteem through these “indiscretions.” Another thing
he has that makes for confidence and poise and a quick willingness to
back his own play, and that is, perfect health. To-day at sixty-three
he is a better man physically than the average man of forty-five. He
functions easily. He keeps in the pink. That perfect good health
would make him chipper and gay, even without his eager, dancing
spirit.
Once upon a time, not in the long ago, I went to an East Side ball in
New York. Word had come to my newspaper office that there might
be trouble there. It turned out to be a decorous and sedate party until
a lad took his little flat derby hat, shaped precisely like the half of a
Rocky Ford melon, and shied it out into the middle of the floor.
“Hooray for Hell,” he said. Then it began. I think Admiral Sims
has a little something of that spirit in him. There is a certain gayety
and joyousness of spirit about him that likes a shindy. It is a quality
the Irish have. It made Donnybrook Fair famous. Admiral Sims has
enjoyed his controversies. He has carried them on in a spirit of high
good humor. They have stimulated him. He is always a gay compan-
ion when he is under fire and engaged in a cut and thrust enter-
prise.
In sharp contrast with this carefree aspect of his personality is his
methodicalness of method. He has a remarkably retentive memory,
really one of these of-course-I-place-you-Mr.-Addison-Sims-of-Seattle
minds. But he does not depend on this memory alone. He reénforces
and documents it. His books, papers, records, maps, etc., are kept ina
No. 124] William S. Sims, Earnest Admiral 519
prerisely ordered, cross-indexed filing system with a place for every-
thing and everything in its place. One of his aides once told me:
“T recall one day in Newport when the Admiral was laid up in bed
with a slight cold (I never knew him to have anything more serious
than this) receiving a note from him asking me to send him a certain
paper that was in his office. The memo which I received from him was
a sketch of his office bookcase with all of the books on the two upper
shelves indicated by name and the location of the paper he wanted
indicated with reference to one of these books. I found the paper
xactly where he said it was and sent it to him forthwith. That
bookcase, like everything else he has ever seen, was photographed
on his mind and the negative filed away for future reference.”
This is not to say that Admiral Sims is a man who loves details
and buries himself in them. He knows how to keep subordinates
busy, and to distribute work as well as any man I have ever known.
I only seek to indicate that he can be carefree and joyous when he is
in a row because he has carefully and thoroughly prepared his position
before he begins to fight; to support my contention that he does not
go off at half-cock.
He does not play for his own hand, either, his own personal, selfish
reward, aggrandizement, and preferment. He is bound up in the
navy. He has been honest with himself and the country he serves
so conspicuously. I frankly confess that I was not wholly and per-
fectly sure of his disinterestedness until the World War. In some of
his other enterprises that brought him into the public eye and notice
there was a possibility that a yearning for personal acclaim and a de-
sire to lift himself to become a figure in the world might have been
one of his motives. There were never lacking persons to whisper
this charge.
But the great war was the searching test. Admiral Sims could
have so managed his affairs and the affairs of the navy abroad, so
conducted himself toward the Navy Department and the powers at
home in Washington, could have been so smooth, so pliant, so dis-
creet, so accommodating, and complaisant, so adroit in taking the
easiest way, that he might have returned full of honors—which he
would not have deserved. I think there is no doubt he could have so
contrived his business that he would have been made a full Admiral
for life with the thanks of Congress, and mayhap a sword or some
520 American Public Men [1921
additional token. But he was never tempted to advance his personal
interests at the expense of the public interest or an efficient prosecu-
tion of the war to an early and unimpeded conclusion. He might
have taken to the water and paraded himself before a gaping continent
had he so chosen, and only a handful of people in all the world would
have known that he was play-acting. To the others he would have
been a hero.
Instead, as was his duty and obligation, he kept a careful, orderly
record of all that was done and all that was not done that affected our
participation in the war at sea. Then when the war ended he came
home and had it out with Mr. Josephus Daniels and the Navy De-
partment. He submitted a piece of constructive, documented, sup-
ported, and attested criticism of naval administration. He pressed
it boldly and fearlessly. He forced a controversy. He got a Senate
investigation and the whole naval conduct of the war thoroughly
aired and investigated. He was sustained in his contentions and his
criticisms. It was a public service. It was not the first nor the second
time he had stood up against the Navy Department and won. It was
the third time.
In 1go1, after trying in vain over a long period through official
channels to get action and remedy, Admiral Sims wrote directly to
President Roosevelt over the head of the Navy Department and
charged that the navy couldn’t shoot for beans. He proved it by the
target practice records. It was a disillusioning and disconcerting
revelation. It raised a rumpus. Roosevelt brought Sims home from
China and put him in charge of the navy’s target practice.
“Do exactly as he says for eighteen months,” said Roosevelt. “If
he does not accomplish something in that time, fire him.”
Sims was inspector of target practice for six and one-half years,
until our naval gunners became the best shots in the world. Whether
they have retained that eminence, I do not know. There was some
good shooting in the North Sea a little while ago in which we did not
participate. But if we are not still the best naval gunners in the world,
we have not fallen back to the humiliating inefficiency that was ours
prior to Sims’s criticism. That was a piece of effective constructive
criticism in naval gunnery.
His second notable encounter with the Navy Department grew out
of his first. He brought about a radical change and improvement in
No. 124] William S. Sims, Earnest Admiral 521
naval construction. Roosevelt helped him in this, too. From 1900
to 1907 Sims constantly poured into the Department a flood of reports
in which he repeatedly charged gross errors of construction in our
fighting ships. They weren’t properly protected, they weren’t prop-
erly designed, there was virtually nothing about them that was not
wrong; they were armored under water but not above, the guns lay
so low that in a sea they were awash; the gun apertures in the turret
were too large and offered no protection to the gun crews, the maga-
zines were exposed and badly placed.
“The Kentucky is not a battleship, at all. She is the worst crime
in naval construction ever perpetrated by the white race,” was one
descriptive comment.
By the beginning of 1908 these charges and assertions were appear-
ing in public print. Sims was threatened with court-martial. Secre-
tary Metcalfe, who didn’t know or even suspect that President Roose-
velt was privy to all that was going on, wrote Sims a formidable
letter. But Roosevelt quietly squelched all that. The present design
and construction of American battleships dates from those criticisms.
and that issue forced by Sims.
Twice it was thought the part of “discretion” by the President or
the Navy Department to administer Pickwickian reprimands to Ad-
miral Sims for his “indiscretions.” At the Guildhall in London in
1910 he said: “If the time ever comes when Great Britain is menaced
by a European coalition she can count upon every ship, every dollar,
and every drop of blood of her kindred beyond the sea.” Of course,
this was a great “indiscretion,” doubly so because of the fact that it
was true. Sims was reprimanded, and then when his prophecy came
true was dispatched to London to give the aid he had promised; that
he had stepped outside his jurisdiction to promise.
His latest “indiscretion” was a frank public expression of his views
about a faction or an element of the Irish people. It inevitably caused
a commotion and Sims was duly reprimanded by the Secretary of the
Navy—and then went across the street and spent a pleasant social
hour by invitation with the Commander-in-Chief of the Army and
Navy, the President of the United States. The next three months
he spent in endeavoring to answer all the letters, telegrams, and mes-
sages of warm commendation he received. The flood of these came to
be so great that he had to have a form letter of reply printed.
522 American Public Men [1921
Sims is a keen professional. The navy is his be all and end all. He
thinks ahead. He tries to peer into the future. He has a clear pro-
fessional vision and a working imagination. He has never become a
“shellback” in the navy.
In the present rivalry between the surface craft and the aircraft
at sea his mind is veering toward the aircraft as something new and
full of undeveloped possibilities. He has been urgent before com-
mittees of Congress in asking for airplane carriers. These carriers
may prove to be the capital ship of the immediate and imminent
future. This eager, almost boyish, quality of his mind that makes
him quick to receive new ideas, new things, is a thing that makes him
likable as a companion.
Young officers in the navy are his warmest and most enthusiastic
admirers. One of them told me: “There has always been a team
whenever we were at sea with Admiral Sims as the captain, elected
to this position by the team because he has always been the best
member on it. His has been a discipline of appreciation rather than
a discipline of fear.”
A fine, gay, upstanding sailor man. That he is unafraid is the thing
to know and remember about him.
Edward G. Lowry, Washington Close-Ups (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1921),
246-253.
— e
125. Elihu Root, Public Servant (1921)
BY ANDREW TEN EYCK.
For matter by Root see Nos. 51 ana 123 above.
CERTAIN lawyer, who had often met Elihu Root in the prac-
tice of his profession, interested me one evening in the smoking-
room of a transatlantic liner by the remark that Mr. Root took hold
of the case when the papers were ready. “Let me have all the papers.”
Then in the quiet of his office he evolved the solution that should win
in court. This man said that Mr. Root works like a mathematician
with intricate problems: he detaches the situation first, then solves
it; that his legal acumen is something more than business ability or
legal knowledge.
No. 125] Elihu Root, Public Servant 522
The success Mr. Root achieved twenty years ago as a lawyer in
handling difficult problems of big business is remembered. At the
age when most men of the first caliber have either made or unmade a
public career through previous service in politics he obtained the
Government of the United States, as it were, for his client. Then
great constructive accomplishments began to appear. He reorganized
the United States Army; created the General Staff; devised and drafted
the Platt Amendment for Cuba; wrote every word of the organic law
of the Philippines; inaugurated a foreign policy toward Latin America
—a thing which had not existed since the days of Blaine. It was Mr.
Root who prevented Japan from reaping the full fruits of victory over
Russia, just as he had prevented England from remaining in China
after the Boxer crisis by accepting the Czar’s proposal! to withdraw.
Mr. Roosevelt’s appraisement of these things, which in the heat of a
partisan campaign he did not amend, was: “The greatest man that
has arisen on either side of the Atlantic in my lifetime.”
The words which my fellow-counselor and traveler spoke of Mr.
Root’s modus operandi have some pertinency as he joins the Washing-
ton Conference on limitation of armaments and the threatening prob-
lems of the Pacific and Far East. “Let me see all the papers. Let us
get these difficulties out where we can look at them. This is the first
thing to do.” When Mr. Root came over to London a year ago last
July from The Hague, I spent part of an afternoon with him. It
was in his suite at Claridge’s. Henry White was there. Mr. Root
was fresh from The Hague, where he had been sitting for a month in
conference. He remarked how hard it was in international conference
to get the papers out where one can work at them. “The difficulty
is not with principles,” he said, “but with understanding each other
through the barriers to communication which different ways of think-
ing and feeling present. It is another country, another language,
another literature, another custom, and sometimes a great many, that
you have to deal with. One learns quickly there that respect for the
feelings and prejudices of others is the condition for having one’s
awn feelings and prejudices respected. That is the problem of di-
plomacy.”
We had known in London of Mr. Root’s conference with Lord
Phillimore when he first arrived in England on his way to The Hague.
Mr. Root believes in having a plan—not a too comprehensive plan,
524 American Public Men [192x
but a working plan. He points to one cause of the failure of Paris as
the lack of a plan. When he walked down the gangplank at Plymouth,
he carried in his pocket a scheme for the Permanent Court of Justice.
He conferred with Lord Phillimore. The merit of the Root plan which
was adopted was its avoidances of the pitfall of the Hague Tribunal
for Arbitration in the manner of selecting judges. The testimony
of its merits is the now complete panel of judges for the International
Court of Justice selected by the Assembly of the League of Nations.
The Root psychology has, perhaps, the inherent limitation of the
defects of its virtue. Detachment of view for solution of problems in
politics creates suspicion. It does not produce the conviction of im-
partiality that it should. ‘‘There must be something behind or hidden
in this ideal Constitution,” said a great enough number of people to
defeat the adoption of the proposed Constitution in New York in
1915. “He is not one of us,” said emissaries in Russia in 1917 before
the Root mission arrived. “He would make the best President, but
Taft is the best candidate,” said Mr. Roosevelt.
And yet he enjoys a position in England not unlike that of Bryce
in America. He declined the proffered headship of the International
Court of Justice. He is spoken of throughout Europe in the equivalent
of the phrase of Roosevelt: “The greatest man on either side of the
Atlantic.” Lord Bryce said to me: “Your greatest Secretary of
State since Webster, the greatest brain you have.”
It has been said of Mr. Root that he is aloof and unimaginative.
I do not agree. The manner in which he goes about the solution of
problems may suggest aloofness. But he will talk to you and intimate
what is going on in his mind—more than you may advisedly repeat.
He seeks your view-point. He is sociable. His imagination is that of
the mathematician rather than the poet. It is the vision of a con-
structive worker. He has always followed the lure of great problems
in business and in public office. Of the possibilities in statesmanship
that have come to him he has selected to wrestle with those that
appealed to the imagination: a code judicial for the Philippines, an
ideal Constitution for the State of New York, a mission to aid a
limitless country like Russia, the scheme for the International Court
of Justice. Now that the Court is in being, the routine work of its
headship would waste and dull the strength of his remaining years.
There is not allurement in such work for Mr. Root’s constructive
No. 125] Elihu Root, Public Servant 525
imagination. But there is in the part he is to take in the Washington
Conference. That is why he has taken it.
I talked with Mr. Root on the eve of his journey to Washington to
see Mr. Harding. He was impressed with what Lord Bryce had said
to him at Williamstown about the people in America having more
interest in foreign affairs than those in England. He said to me
that he believed it was a true observation, and asked my opinion.
“I do not suppose,” said Mr. Root, “that until recent years foreign
affairs have enlisted the slightest interest on the part of the people
of the United States. We must get rid of that feeling which exists
so widely throughout the world and that Bret Harte describes in one
of his books—the feeling that exists in a village to which a stranger
comes, and the people look upon him as having the defect of being a
foreigner. We need a certain international-mindedness.”’
I asked Mr. Root if it was sound to say that questions of armament
can be considered only in connection with those issues because of which
nations take up arms, and that therefore it follows that the coming
Conference should first vitally concern itself with such issues. “ De-
cidedly yes,” was the answer that he made. “That is fundamental,
more fundamental than is apparent.”
The significance of Mr. Root’s observation is best appreciated in
reading the reports which were recently handed to the League of
Nations at Geneva on the status of armaments in each country. One
year ago the Powers agreed to a continuous armament reduction.
Nothing was said about those problems that make for war. The
records are now in, and prove the direct method of Geneva a con-
fessed failure. The great signatory Powers—Great Britain, France,
Japan, Italy—refused not only to reduce armament but even to report
on existing status. On one pretext or another the burden of armament
has constantly increased. Let us see if Washington will do better.
At least it deserves credit for the frankness of addressing itself not
only to technical questions of armament but to those persistent prob-
lems that threaten the peace of the world.
Mr. Root believes the coming Conference will be our way into a
working world co-operative arrangement. I think I may say that
it is his hope that there will grow out of the Washington Conference
a permanent Association of Nations for conference which will include
the United States and all other civilized Powers. Perhaps there is
526 American Public Men [z921
some intimation of the weight he gives to technical disarmament in
what he once said of the provisions of the League Covenant bearing
on the limitation of armaments: “The success of these provisions is
vital. If they are not effective, the whole effort to secure future
peace goes for nothing. There must be a permanent commission to
inspect the carrying out of disarmament. Every country should
consent, just as every trustee is willing to have an independent
audit of his accounts.” Geneva has just shown that such consent is
not forthcoming.
Mr. Root is in excellent health. There are the same quick step,
alert and erect carriage, glow of health in his cheeks, that there were
six years ago in the Constitutional Convention at Albany, where I
saw him daily. He looks by less than twenty years the seventy-six
that he is. He is enjoying life. He spent the winter in California
and the summer at his boyhood home at Clinton, New York. There is
in his reappearance in Washington something contradictory to what
Englishmen say of our public men: “They do not come back. Ten
years is the length of their careers.”
Washington will see the unchanged Root. It will find him asking
for all the papers overnight. He comes from another generation,
familiar because of his part in a former day with the supreme efforts
then made to regulate and secure the peace of the world. In this
he stands uniquely serviceable to his country and the Conference as
a whole. He knows the rocks on which the ships have foundered.
Mr. Root has the solemn sense that there is about to be a drama which
means life or death in its ultimate dénouement—that the Washington
Conference is not to deal with the late war, which was done ill or well
at Paris, but to prevent the next war, to make peace before war
comes.
Andrew Ten Eyck, Elihu Root: A Study of the Man and His Ways in Outlook
(New York, 1921), CXXIX, 429-430.
No. 126] Henry Cabot Lodge 527
126. Henry Cabot Lodge, a Massachusetts Institution
(1924)
BY SENATOR JAMES W. WADSWORTH, JR.
This address by a Senator from New York characterizes one of the most scholarly
of our national statesmen. Lodge supported the Wilson administration during the
World War, but steadfastly opposed the President’s plan for American participa-
tion in the League of Nations. On this, as on other controversial subjects, he sus-
tained his convictions with great warmth and astuteness. For Lodge, see also No.
202 below; and for a speech by him, see No. 171 below.
R. PRESIDENT: I am glad of this opportunity to express
my appreciation of Henry Casor Lopce. I shall not at-
tempt to review his remarkable achievements in public life or in the
field of literature, but shall confine myself to one or two comments as
to his personal characteristics as I found them to be.
At the outset, Mr. President, I may be pardoned a personal refer-
ence. Ten years ago or thereabouts I came to the Senate, compara-
tively speaking, pretty much a youngster both in years and experience,
and conscious of that fact, sought advice from those who could give
it. It was with some trepidation that I went to Senator LODGE
and with what boldness I could summon asked him for help. I shall
never forget the generosity of his response. Not only at that time but
during all our service together in the Senate he extended to me, as
he did no doubt to many others, that friendly hand and generous
slap on the back which is so encouraging, especially when coming from
an older to a younger man. I learned, therefore, early in my contact
with Mr. Lopce of his innate kindliness and generosity.
It has been said or thought of him, perhaps, by some people that
he was not very approachable. I have a different conception of him
in that respect. Mr. Lopcr had a sensitive regard for the privacy
of others. One can not visualize him, or one finds it difficult
to visualize him, “scraping acquaintance” with a total stranger.
He might be well-nigh overcome with desire to know a man and dis-
cuss some topic of interest with him, but he could not bring himself
to invade that man’s privacy. This may have been shyness; it may
have come from the old New England habit of thought—and it should
be remembered that in his blood flowed the essence of old New Eng-
528 American Public Men [1924
land—but whatever gave rise to that habit in him it had a most pro-
found effect upon his relations with his fellows. He wanted friendship;
he could not go out and demand it; but when he formed a friendship
or when friendship came to him, he was proud of it and cherished it
in a manner difficult to describe.
There was much of the poet in him. He loved beauty in art and
literature, and one could have no more delightful experience than to
hear Mr. Lopce discourse about great authors, great books, great
paintings, and great statues. To the most ill informed on matters of
that sort, Mr. Lopcr could describe works of art and literature in
a manner to capture the imagination of his listeners.
He could clothe an author or a book in his description in such a
fashion as to excite the interest of his hearers and bring them to a
better comprehension of the classics in these fields. I say it was
a delight, as well as an education, to hear him discourse on things of
that sort. Sometimes I thought that he was at his very best when,
surrounded by a group of friends, he found an opportunity thus to
converse.
I say he loved beauty in nature. Perhaps it is not generally known
to the public that Mr. LopcE loved a good horse. In all of his life
he loved horses. Nothing gave him more of a thrill, I am led to be-
lieve, than galloping across country, across fields, out in the open,
on an intelligent and high-spirited horse. He loved to exchange
reminiscences with lovers of the horse, and he did it in such fashion
as to display his affection for that noble animal and also his liking for
the outdoors; and, Mr. President, if I may be pardoned the suggestion,
it is very seldom that a man who loves an intelligent and high-spirited
horse fails to be a good sportsman in all of life’s contentions.
His patriotism has been mentioned here this afternoon and full
justice has been done to it. I might make this observation: It seemed
to me as I heard him talk with his friends on both sides of the Chamber
during the days when great debates were going on in the Senate in
relation to the future of our country and its contact with other nations,
that his patriotism had a certain element of fierceness init. Iam sure
that all of you can remember the intensity with which he would express
his convictions concerning the destiny of the United States, whether
he was expressing them upon the floor of the Senate or in private con-
ferences. There was an element of fierceness in it, and this may be
No. 126] Henry Cabot Lodge 529
regarded as somewhat unusual in a scholar and historian. All too
often, in my humble judgment, scholars extend their national affections
a little too liberally and are lacking in that very intensity of love for
their own country which, after all, is so essential to a nation if it is to
survive in a crisis. But Mr. Lopce’s reading, his study of the
history of nations and the habits of human beings, apparently led
him to that kind of patriotism which I have endeavored to describe.
He was proud of his country, always proud of it. No matter whether
the administration here at Washington was Democratic or Republican,
he was proud of the United States. He could not bear to think that
it was taking second place in any of its international contacts. I have
often thought, as we have talked with him in the Committee on For-
eign Relations, that his consistent support of the Diplomatic and Con-
sular Service was due in large measure to this feeling. He wanted to
be sure that the American ambassador or the American minister or
the American consular officer was holding his own against all comers
at his foreign post.
The Senator from Utah [Mr. Smoot], in referring to Mr. Lopcr’s
patriotism, has mentioned his support of an administration of an
opposite party when the country was facing a great crisis. That was
perfectly typical of him. He was not without ambition. What good
man is without ambition? But his ambition was to serve. He might
have led a much happier life had he not been in public service. He
had many resources at his command—financial, social, literary—
which would have engaged his time and delighted his mind; but he
wanted to serve, to serve his country. He wanted to serve her well;
and at times he was conscious, I think, of the fact that he had served
his country well, and that made him happy. His pride in service was
not confined to his own service. He was happy and glad to see others
serving well; and, I think, nothing in all his life made him quite so
happy and quite so proud as the service rendered to his country by
his son-in-law, Augustus P. Gardner. Many of you, no doubt, have
heard him mention Mr. Gardner with a very evident thrill of pride.
Mr. Loper was devoted to his home; and his home was in Massa-
chusetts, never in Washington. Whenever he got the chance he went
back to Nahant, which had been his home from early boyhood, the
home of all his family, and in some measure the home of his grand-
children. His heart was there, and there was much of deep and rich
530 American Public Men [1920
sentiment in his heart. As I recollect him now, I feel that he would
have been even happier had he been able to express his tender senti-
ments to his fellows as freely as he would have liked. His inability
to do so—if I may use that expression—was due to that quality or
habit of thought which I tried to describe a few moments ago.
Mr. President, contact with a man like Mr. LopcE is inspiring;
it is helpful, and, I say frankly, especially helpful to those of younger
years. We are all better men for his having been here, and this
country is a better country.
James W. Wadsworth, Jr., Address in the United States Senate, January 19,
1925; Henry Cabot Lodge: Memorial Addresses Delivered in Congress (Washington,
Government Printing Office, 1925), 52-56.
127. Eugene Debs, Social Leader (1926)
FROM THE NATION
Eugene Victor Debs (1855-1926) was a sincere socialist and pacifist, and a great
leader of men of his faith.—Bibliography: David Karsner, Debs, his Life and Letters.
BK ENE DEBS was the only Jesus Christ I ever knew.” So Sam
Moore, an embittered Negro convict faced with lifelong im-
prisonment, explained to the warden of Atlanta Penitentiary the
extraordinary effect upon him of ’Gene Debs’s friendship. ’Gene
Debs was a man who evoked that extravagant, almost unbelievable,
type of affection in thousands upon thousands of his fellow-men. He
evoked it because he gave it. At his funeral services in Terre Haute
Victor Berger said that Debs went beyond the Biblical command to
love thy neighbor as thyself, for he loved his neighbor better than
himself, and the vast crowd with tear-stained faces solemnly nodded
assent.
To this love for human beings Debs added a love for humanity.
The two are not always combined. The concern for humanity, the
vision, the dauntless courage, the uncompromising spirit of the prophet
and pioneer may be consistent with a ruthless disregard for the im-
mediate interests of individual human beings. It was not so with
Debs. His courage was born of love. His passion for mankind, his
No. 127] Eugene Debs, Social Leader 532
hope for the workers grew out of the love of comrades, not only as
they might become but as they were with all their faults and weak-
nesses. In this combination of dauntless prophet, far-seeing idealist,
and simple lover of men lay the man’s greatness.
Debs embraced the cause of the workers from choice and not ne-
cessity. The outward circumstances of his early life and his own gifts
were of a sort that would have led him naturally to political and
financial success. Indeed, while he was still a very young man, he
made a successful beginning in local politics. But his sympathies,
long before he was a Socialist, were with the workers. Our generation
has almost forgotten that Debs began as an unusually successful
labor organizer. He was the founder of the present Brotherhood of
Railway Trainmen. When he became convinced that this form of
craft organization was not adequate to the needs of the railway workers
he resigned his $4,000-a-year position to become president of the
American Railway Union at $900 a year. The world still remembers
that union and its part in the Pullman strike. The strike and the
union were both broken by Grover Cleveland’s use of United States
troops against the protest of Governor Altgeld of Illinois. This
strike, too, was marked by the beginning of government by injunction,
and Debs was sent to jail for six months on a charge of contempt—
the forerunner of a series of similar acts of judicial tyranny.
In prison Debs first learned of Socialism and became a Socialist,
although not until after the first Bryan campaign did he irrevocably
tie his fortunes to that movement. Following his release from prison
Debs undertook to raise and pay off $40,000 of debts accumulated
py the American Railway Union. This obligation he fulfilled at great
cost to himself at a time when not even the creditors of the union held
him responsible.
From 1897 on, Debs’s life and fortunes were inextricably mingled
with those of the Socialist movement. Five times he was its candidate
for President. He was not primarily a builder of policies, nor in his
later years an organizer. He was a flaming spirit, a living incarnation
of an ideal. That ideal was an ideal of uncompromising struggle,
but of struggle by non-violent methods. The victory he wanted was
a victory of peace. It was impossible that Debs could believe the
European war a war for democracy, or that any war could end war.
So he made himself the spokesman of the Socialist ideal of peace
532 American Public Men [1926
through an understanding between the workers of the world. For his
devotion to liberty and peace he was sentenced to ten years of penal
servitude. Today it seems almost unthinkable that on the basis of
his famous Canton speech any man could have been convicted. In
no sense were his words pro-German. They did not ask American
troops to lay down their arms. They were a plea for the end of war,
for the recognition of Russia, for the preservation of liberty at home.
Yet that speech, during a “war for democracy,” sent a man past
sixty years of age, suffering from the heart disease which finally re-
sulted in his death, to jail with common felons. Worse still, after the
armistice Debs was kept in jail by the personal vindictiveness of a
President who had himself acknowledged the economic causes of the
war as plainly as the man whom he held prisoner. It was left to
President Harding, in response to public demand, to restore Debs
to freedom. Neither he nor President Coolidge gave him back his
citizenship.
Of Debs’s permanent place in the history of the labor movement
and of social progress it is too early to speak. Philosophically, in
spite of the Communist attempt to claim him, he was an extreme
democrat, a convinced believer in freedom. However much he might
admire the achievements of Russia, he never could identify himself
with any sort of dictatorship. Our generation with its little faith in the
common man may find his philosophy old-fashioned. Temporarily,
at least, it has lost ruch of its appeal. Yet Debs himself was the sort
of man who gives one new confidence in men and their possibilities.
That he was what he was, that he loved as he loved, is reason for hope.
He belongs to the republic of the immortals whose memory is a living
inspiration to mankind.
Nation, November 3, 1926 (New York), 443.
No. 128] William E. Borah, Free Lance 533
128. William E. Borah, Free Lance (1926)
BY RAY T. TUCKER
Senator Borah has represented his state of Idaho at Washington for twenty years.
Nominally a Republican, he has defied precise classification because of his inde-
pendent views on nearly all subjects and his determination to defend them. He
succeeded Henry Cabot Lodge (see No. 126 above) as Chairman of the Foreign
Relations Committee of the Senate. For a speech by Borah, see No. 193 below.
ILLIAM EDGAR BORAH’S first noteworthy appearance
on the American scene, as brilliant prosecutor of three Western
mining leaders who had found dynamite more effective than collec-
tive bargaining, was contemporaneous with the homicidal outbreak
of Harry Thaw and the evolution of a type of newspaper which
seized upon both men as equally good copy. Borah’s forensic feats
in that remote Idaho court-room were pictured in great and colorful
detail by a swarm of metropolitan reporters, and so his star was high
in the firmament when he hung his black wide-awake hat on a Senate
office peg on March 4, 1907, combed back his shaggy brown mane,
and looked around for new worlds to astound, if not to conquer.
His part in prosecuting Big Bill Haywood, Moyer and Pettibone
had made a deep impression upon the Old Guard leaders of the Senate.
They rubbed their hands at the accession of this solid and serious
Republican from the Mormon State of Idaho, for their ranks were
in sore need of recruits in those muck-raking, panicky days of 1907.
The Old Guard envisaged Borah as a stalwart reinforcement in the
holy work of resisting the new movement for reform, and stifling
the awakening class-consciousness of the American working man.
He was immediately made chairman of the Committee on Labor and
Education, an unheard-of trust for a first-termer, for any attempt
to translate the rising clamor of the down-trodden into legislative
reality would have to have its beginnings in that committee. To
certain cynical colleagues who expressed alarm at the bestowal of
such a key post on an untried man, Senator Aldrich, the Republican
boss, replied with a cloak-room wink: “It’s all right. I’ve looked him
up. He’s an anti-labor man and a corporation attorney.”
But Aldrich, for once, was wrong. He was the first of the long line
of Senators to grapple unsuccessfully with the enigma of Borah.
534 American Public Men [192¢
For almost immediately the newcomer took to disconcerting, and,
in the view of the Old Guard, grossly immoral practises. Far from
guarding valiantly the Senate citadel of capitalism, he proceeded,
with full steam, to make a wreck of it. Soon his committee was
reporting out, and getting passed, the most radical proposals an
astonished and horrified Senate had ever been asked to consider on
the labor question. There were bills establishing the eight-hour day
on government contracts, bills for the creation of a new and highly
dubious Department of Labor, and subversive resolutions for the
investigation of the twelve-hour day and the seven-day week in the
sacrosanct iron and steel industries. Borah and labor became artic-
ulate together, and began to sing the same appalling tune. It was good
business for a young Senator trying to get upon the first pages, but
in Aldrich’s view it was sheer spoils and treason. His protégé was
striking mighty blows at everything the Aldriches held to be sacred.
No more disastrous treachery had ever been heard of on Capitol Hill.
From that painful perfidy dates the conviction of all the Republican
stalwarts that Borah is an untrustworthy fellow. His doings since
then, stretching over a score of years, have only confirmed this judg-
ment. To the Old Guard of to-day, as to that of 1907, he is a puzzle
and a plague. As the years have rolled on, indeed, he has puzzled
the safe and sane men more and more, for sometimes he has been
violently against them and at other times he has been amazingly
with them. There are many facets, it appears, to his character. At
times he has stood forth as a soaring Liberal; at times he has been
more conservative than Mr. Coolidge. The public, long since despair-
ing of understanding him, or reconciling the conflicting manifestations
of his personality, now views him, it would seem, as sui generis—a
courageous but incomprehensible figure, one who voices his convic-
tions unexpectedly and boldly, no matter how adversely they may
affect his party standing or his political security.
His enemies call him an obstructionist, a dreamer, a prima donna,
and say he prefers the fame which flows from strutting the political
peaks in solitary grandeur and obstinacy to solid accomplishments
shared with his peers. When his Senate colleagues discuss him among
themselves, they use very plain English: he is a faker, a trimmer, a
false alarm. His admirers are just as intemperate; to them he is
the foremost exponent of practical idealism in American public life
No. 128] Wiliam E. Borah, Free Lance 535
to-day and the perennially prospective messiah of a third party dedi-
cated to righteousness. Meanwhile, Mr. Borah himself appears to
know precisely what he believes, and why. His one and constant
boast is that he is an old-fashioned American who patterns his beliefs
and conduct after the Constitution and the—to him—obvious pur-
poses of the Founding Fathers. He can justify—to himself at least—
every act of his mystifying career by constitutional precedents.
Before the heroes who founded this best of all governments his
abasement is absolute.
But necessity often compels him to resort to curious personal
interpretations and a species of revelation to satisfy this passion for
following in the Fathers’ footsteps. As the social and political order
has grown more complex his divinations have had to become more
numerous and arduous, and to many it now seems that his divining-
rod has been overworked and warped. But to all entreaties that he
discard it, or lay it up for repairs, he remains deaf, for he believes that
he cannot go wrong if he clings to the Constitution, or to his under-
standing of it. With the thunderous assertion that “the Fathers
understood the science of government as no other single group of
men ever understood it,” he annihilates his opponents, and he will
continue to do so as long as his colleagues in the Senate let pass with-
out challenge his highly dubious citations of precedent, and his clair-
voyant glimpses into the minds of Washington, Hamilton and Jeffer-
sonar E
Mr. Borah’s views on Prohibition will probably not affect the
eventual settlement of this problem. The chief harm he will do will
be to help defer the day when it can be disposed of without prejudice
and without bigotry. Meanwhile, his speeches will fan the flame of
fanatic passion, whether he means them to or not, and he himself
will depart further and further from the record. For once he has
attacked a subject, he has a tendency to neglect the facts, so lured
is he by the magic of his own voice. It is a common failing, but in
him it amounts to a disease. He is a great believer in oratory. Per-
haps no other man in American public life to-day would so sincerely
deplore the passing of the spoken word as a political and parliamentary
weapon. Fortunately for him, he believes that this will come “only
after selfishness and sensuality shall have imbruted or destroyed all
the nobler faculties of the mind.”
530 American Public Men [1926
The conventional method of describing a Senate combat in which
Mr. Borah takes a hand is to liken it to a bullfight. Borah, as the
careless and imaginative pen records it, leans back easily in his seat,
seemingly taking no interest in the subject under discussion. A faintly
cynical smile occasionally appears on his lips. Finally he climbs to
his feet, still smiling and leaning slightly forward. And then, urbanely,
effortlessly, he becomes the picador, hurling jibing darts into the hide
of the poor Senator who has aroused him. The victim, squirming,
eventually flings back with an angry retort. Then Borah becomes
the mighty matador. His dimpled chin juts out, the vertical lines
in his forehead deepen into a frown, his eyes flash, he tosses his tre-
mendous mane, and his words pour forth torrentially. They become
rapier thrusts, seeking straight the heart of his antagonist, who pres-
ently falls. Borah then tosses aside his rapier lightly and resumes his
seat. His colleagues stare in admiration; the galleries rock with
applause.
What the correspondents fail to see is that Borah’s rapier is some-
times tipped with poison. He often bests an opponent because the
poor fellow is not sufficiently versed in history to controvert some of his
most devastating and inaccurate assertions and allusions. A checkup
reveals a Borah mistaken in his facts, but unless the error is de-
tected while the combatants are on their feet, he gets the headlines,
and his rival gets the ha-ha. During a debate, for example, on the
French debt Senator Bruce of Maryland essayed to defend France
by citing its generosity to the struggling colonies, while Mr. Borah
contended that France had assisted the colonies merely to embarrass
England. A sneer was Mr. Borah’s retort to the Maryland Senator’s
assertion that France had given Benjamin Franklin 6,000,000 livres
for which no repayment was asked. But as the debate continued,
the plodding Bruce seemed to have the better of it in his authorities
and facts. The great matador was about to be worsted. But no!
Out flashed that famous rapier.
“Mr. President,” appealed Borah, “I object to the Senator putting
incorrect history into my speech!”
The galleries shook with applause and Senators chuckled at the
discomfiture of the pedestrian Mr. Bruce. It was another Borah
triumph. But meanwhile it is a fact that France did advance the
6,000,000 livres as a gift.
No. 128] William E. Borah, Free Lance 537
In much the same way, Mr. Borah has gained certain strategic
victories in his demand for a more liberal policy toward Russia. As
precedent, he cites the Washington Administration’s recognition of a
France as bloody and disorganized as Russia is supposed to be to-day.
Washington’s Cabinet faced the same problem, he declares, and
unanimously decided to accord recognition. The Senator apparently
forgets, or slurs over the fact, that his hero, Alexander Hamilton,
proposed to so hedge around recognition that it would have been a
meaningless gesture. Nor does he point out that it was Jefferson’s
honest mind which prevailed over views of Hamilton and his clique
in the Cabinet.
These seem trifling things, and they are, as politics go. They are
done almost daily by Mr. Borah’s more obscure fellows. But in the
great Idaho seer they seem somehow incongruous and discreditable.
His many failures, though sometimes more magnificent than his lesser
colleagues’ successes, loom large because of the high expectations he
arouses. If he has come to be regarded throughout the country as the
foremost trimmer in American public life to-day he has only himself
to blame.
Ray T. Tucker, Borah of Idaho, in American Mercury (December, 1926), IX,
385-393 passim. Reprinted by permission of the author.
CHAPTER XXIV — PRESIDENT WOODROW
WILSON
129. A Breaker of Precedents (1912)
BY EX-SECRETARY JOSEPHUS DANIELS (1924)
Daniels served as Secretary of the Navy under Wilson from 1913 to 1921. He
was a southern newspaper editor, with no special preparation for governmental
administration. He was an earnest and prodigious worker, but roused opposition.—
Bibliography on Wilson: W. E. Dodd, Woodrow Wilson; H. J. Ford, Woodrow
Wilson; H. W. Harris, Woodrow Wilson from the English Point of View; A. M.
Low, Woodrow Wilson; David F. Houston, Eight Years with Wilson's Cabinet;
Charles Seymour, editor, The Intimate Papers of Colonel House; J. P. Tumulty,
Woodrow Wilson as I Knew Him; William Allen White, Woodrow Wilson; Woodrow
Wiison, Speeches and Public Papers, collected by various editors.
N December, 1912, shortly after Governor Wilson had been elected
President, a friend visited him at the executive offices, in Trenton.
This gentleman, who afterwards became a member of his Cabinet,
had called to secure the influence of the President-elect to adjust
differences in Delaware which threatened to defeat the election of a
Democratic Senator in that State. A Senate in sympathy was im-
portant to the working together to carry out party pledges. Governor
Wilson was keen to do anything proper in the matter, but the threat-
ened division was adjusted without the necessity of his intervention.
“Did you ever hear the reading of a President’s message at the joint
session of Congress?” he asked the visitor, apropos of nothing. His
friend had.
“Did anybody pay attention to the reading?” he asked, and his
visitor told him that usually the members chatted or read papers
while the clerks read the message. Many of them went out, and it
was out of the ordinary for anybody to listen to it, the Congressmen
preferring to read it for themselves later. That was all, but later when
President Wilson stood in Congress to deliver his message in person,
the conversation was recalled.
538
No. 120] A Breaker of Precedents 539
Jefferson had discontinued delivering the messages in person because
he thought it savored too much of an “address from the throne.”
When Wilson announced his intention to return to the practice begun
by Washington, old-timers thought it looked too much like possible
executive dictation. But after his first appearance, when not only
Congress but the diplomats and all who could gain admittance to the
House of Representatives listened intently, applauding what they
approved, there was none to doubt the wisdom of restoring the Wash-
ington practice. This breaking of a precedent an hundred years old
was an innovation which demonstrated its wisdom. He prefaced the
message by saying: “I am very glad indeed to have this opportunity
to address the two Houses directly and to verify for myself the impres-
sion that the President of the United States is a person, not a mere
department of Government hailing Congress from some isolated
island of jealous power, sending messages, not speaking naturally
and with his own voice—that he is a human being trying to codperate
with other human beings in a common service.” He added: “After
this pleasant experience, I shall feel quite normal, in all our dealings
with one another.” Both President Harding and President Coolidge
followed the example of their precedent-breaking and precedent-
making predecessor. Wilson ended recommendations to Congress.
The delivering of the message is now an impressive occasion and the
views of the executive receive greater consideration than when the
clerks hurried or droned through their messages.
Readers of “The State,” written many years before he broke the
precedent of a century by delivering his message in person, might have
known he would do that very thing. He had said in his book, ‘‘ Wash-
ington and John Adams addressed Congress in person on public
affairs, but Jefferson, the third President, was not an easy speaker
and preferred to send a written message.” Here is his scorn of the
way precedents control: “Subsequent Presidents followed his example,
of course. Hence, a sacred rule of constitutional action.”
“You do not mean to tell me that Wilson is thinking of doing so
revolutionary a thing as that?” exclaimed an old-time Senator to a
friend of Wilson’s shortly before the inauguration in 1913. “The
Senators would resent it. It would be a fatal mistake. I hope you
will dissuade him if he has such a thing in mind.”
The friend of Wilson had just returned from Princeton and was
540 President Woodrow Wilson [1912
talking to the Senator about his visit. The President-elect had asked
him: “Is there not a room in the Capitol set apart for the President? ”
“Yes.” “Does the President ever occupy it?” The answer was that
it was occupied by the chief executive only at the close of Congress
when he signed measures passed in the rush hours. At other times,
it was explained, it was used by the Senators to see favored visitors.
“What would you think,” asked Wilson of his visitor, “if I should
make use of it now and then when it was desirable to hold conferences
with Senators?” The friend, himself lacking reverence for outworn
precedents, said that the builders of the Capitol having constructed
a room called “The President’s Room,” he could see no reason why
it should not be used by the officer for whom it was set apart, but
added, “If you use it, there will be the cry that you are trying to
control legislative action. It has not been used since the time whereof
the memory of man runneth not to the contrary.”
Later, when President Wilson for the first time occupied the Pres-
ident’s room and held conferences there with a number of Senators on
important policies, this happened: the old-time Senator, who had been
shocked at the very thought of the innovation, in an interview pub-
lished next morning, expressed his gratification that, instead of send-
ing for Senators to make a trip to the White House, the new President
did them the courtesy to call at the Capitol for conferences. Neverthe-
less, though this Senator was converted, President Wilson never
occupied his room at the Capitol that there was not talk of “executive
dictation ” and of the attempt “to relegate the Senate to a subordinate
position.” Most Senators, however, did not indulge in such criticism,
for while they found Mr. Wilson earnestly advocating his measures,
they found he was seeking a common ground of agreement. Adamant
for the principle at stake he was, but reasonable and ready for every
helpful concession. Often his open-minded conferences with Senators
and Representatives caused him to adopt gladly the methods their
experience showed were an improvement on his own. But once the
line of battle had been drawn, once the opponents of the principle
involved were seeking compromise that would impair the idea aimed
at, in the Federal Reserve contest and others, he adopted the motto
of Grant: “I purpose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer.”
It has been a precedent time out of mind in the White House that
no one must sit down while the President is standing. There is a
No. 129] A Breaker of Precedents 54I
story that years and years ago, a lady of fifty took a seat while waiting
for her husband at the close of a brilliant reception. A White House
visitor reminded her of the rule and told her it was regarded as lèse
majesté. President Wilson upon all formal occasions made no change
in rules. One evening when the receiving party were gathered in the
library upstairs awaiting the signal to descend the stairs in the “grand
march” as it is called, a member of the Cabinet and a lady house
guest drew up their chairs by the fireplace for a cozy chat, all unmind-
ful that the President was standing. The wife of the Cabinet officer,
who was standing and engaged in conversation with the President,
gave the wifely command by her eyes to her husband. He obeyed it
and came to his feet immediately. Seeing this pantomime, the Presi-
dent walked over to the Cabinet member, placed a hand on each
shoulder, pressed him back into the chair, saying with a smile, “Sit
down and behave yourself,” and, turning to the wife, added that no
matter what the policy at formal occasions, no office could make him
forget his right to be a gentleman at his own fireside.
“Mr. Bryan was saying to me,” said President Wilson at an early
meeting of the Cabinet—he repeated the remark that the Secretary
of State had made, in a low tone of voice, before the Cabinet session
had actually begun. Other members were talking and Mr. Bryan had
chosen the moment when the others were so engaged to speak of a state
department matter which was not important enough for discussion.
“T am repeating this whispered message,” President Wilson went on
to say, “solely because when I read the ‘Diary of Gideon Welles’
I was impressed by the resentment felt by the other members of the
Cabinet when Seward would take the President aside and talk with
him alone, while the other members sat by wondering why they could
not be let in on the conversation between the President and the
Secretary of State.” That precedent of private conferences obtaining
in Lincoln days was not followed.
One precedent which had been established from the beginning was
that the President of the United States should not go beyond the
borders of his country. Some indeed had an idea that it was pro-
hibited by the Constitution or the laws. Therefore, when Wilson
decided to go himself to Paris to take part in framing the peace treaty,
there was a great outcry that he was not only smashing tradition and
breaking precedent, but he was also violating the proprieties. So
542 President Woodrow Wilson [1912
fierce was the criticism that an outsider would have supposed that
Wilson was breaking all the Ten Commandments at once. Mr.
Lansing, Secretary of State, whose mind was not open to departures
from custom, says in his book, “I felt it to be my duty, as his official
adviser in foreign affairs, and as one desirous to have him adopt a wise
course, to tell him frankly that I thought the plan for him to attend
was unwise and would be a mistake.” The assumption that it was
Lansing’s duty “as official adviser in foreign affairs” to protest
against Wilson’s going received no rebuke from the President, show-
ing he was often a patient and long-suffering man. “The President
listened to my remarks without comment and turned the conversa-
tion into other channels” was the entry Lansing made in his diary
after the interview, and again in his diary Lansing says he wrote
at the time: “I prophesy trouble in Paris and worse than trouble
kere?’
On the other hand, the New York Times succinctly said Wilson’s
going to Paris was “one of four times when Wilson fell up stairs.” At
the Conference of Governors held in Annapolis, December 18, 1918,
Secretary Lane gave this effective answer to the criticisms of Wilson’s
going to Paris:
“I have seen criticisms of the President and so have you for going
across the water at this time. The spirit which animates him in
going is the spirit of the new day. It is the spirit of giving your hand
to your neighbor. It is the spirit that would make this war the end
of wars.
“The man who stands as the representative of the foremost democ-
racy of the world goes to Europe, not that he may march down the
Champs Elysées, not that he may receive the plaudits of the French
multitudes. But he goes to Europe as the champion of American
ideals because he wants to see that out of the war comes some-
thing worth while. He would have been derelict, he would have been
negligent, he would have been false to our ideas of him, if he had not
stood in Paris in person as the champion of that principle which we
love and those institutions which we hope to see spread around the
world.
“To me, Woodrow Wilson in Paris represents not the ambitions of
Napoleon, striving to master the world by force, but of the greater
Pasteur, the healer of the nation who comes to bring peace, happiness,
No. 129] A Breaker of Precedents 543
and to secure gratitude from those whose lives and homes he makes
secure.”
Every reader of Wilson’s “Congressional Government” should
have known he would go to Paris to the Peace Conference. ‘When
foreign affairs play a prominent part in the politics of a nation, its
executive must of necessity be its guide; must utter every initial judg-
ment, take every first step of action, supply the information upon
which it is to act, suggest and, in a large measure, control its conduct,”
and he added: ‘‘He must always stand at the front of our affairs, and
the office will be as big and as influential as the man who occupies
at.”
“After all,” he said to the Englishmen in the Mansion House at
London, when he visited there in December, 1918—“‘after all, the
breaking of precedents, though this may sound strange doctrine in
England, is the most sensible thing to do. The harness of precedent is
sometimes a very sad and harassing trammel. In this case the break-
ing of precedent is sensible for a reason that is very prettily illustrated
in a remark attributed to Charles Lamb.
“One evening, in a company of his friends, they were discussing a
person who was not present and Lamb said, in his hesitating manner.
“<T h-hate that fellow.’
“‘ Why, Charles,’ one of his friends said, ‘I did not know that you
knew him.’
“Oh, he said, ‘I-I-I d-don’t. I can’t h-hate a man I know.’
“And perhaps that simple and attractive remark may furnish a
secret for cordial international relationship. When we know one
another we cannot hate one another.”
He walked the groove of change.
Josephus Daniels, The Life of Woodrow Wilson (Philadelphia, John C. Winston,
1924), 220-227. Reprinted by special permission of the publishers.
544 President Woodrow Wilson [roms
130. “Too Proud to Fight” (1915)
BY SIR A. MAURICE Low (1918)
Low was the chief American correspondent of the London Morning Post.—Bibliog-
raphy as in No. 129 above.
N the seventh of May, 1915, the Lusitania was torpedoed.
Before that Germany had committed more atrocious crimes, since
then the atrocities of which Germany has been guilty make the sink-
ing of the Lusitania trivial, but nothing that Germany has done so
profoundly affected the moral sense of the entire world. In America
there went up a cry for vengeance; many persons who had conscien-
tiously obeyed the President’s injunction to be neutral in thought and
action now openly proclaimed their detestation of Germany and felt
that the United States must, to preserve her own self-respect and
dignity and in vindication of the rights of humanity, declare war on
Germany. But the President remained unmoved. He sat in the
White House a solitary and lonely figure (Mrs. Wilson had died two
days after England declared war), listening to the growing storm;
listening and pondering and waiting. He knew of the mounting
excitement, he knew that nothing would be more gratifying to the
men who had been the partisans of England from the first than the
uniting of their country with England and France in the war against
Germany; he knew that the torpedo fired by a German submarine
commander had become a powerful agent in bringing the moral
issue home to the nation; he knew he had but to speak, and the in-
different and the apathetic would be quickened and they would
join in the demand for war; but he also knew, and perhaps no man
knew it so well as he, that the destruction of the Lusitania had not
united his people. There were still two camps, the partisans of Ger-
many had not been converted; Americans who believed the war was
none of their affair were shaken, but not convinced. And he knew
that to go to war with a divided country was impossible. Moreover
he had not abandoned hope that the United States could be kept out
of the war; and while from the depths of the Atlantic the dead of the
Lusitama besought him that they be not forgotten, and he was re-
solved that never should they be forgotten and in the fullness of time
No. 130] “Too Proud to Fight” 545
their murder should be expiated, he still cherished the faith that
policy might so shape events that the toll of American life would not
have to be increased.
Some days before the Lusitania had been sent to the bottom Mr.
Wilson had accepted an invitation to address a meeting of newly
naturalized citizens in Philadelphia on the evening of May ro. It
was known of course that the Government of the United States
could not permit such a gross violation of international law as the
sinking of the Lusitania and the murder of its citizens to go unnoticed,
and the public eagerly awaited the President’s action, speculating
whether it would be such a vigorous demand on Germany for repara-
tion and assurances that the crime would not be repeated that,
virtually, it would be an ultimatum and force the United States into
the war on the side of the Allies, or whether Mr. Wilson would be
content to engage in a diplomatic duel with Germany. Mr. Wilson
gave no sign. In accordance with his custom at a time of crisis he
withdrew from practically all contact with his official advisers or
public men; isolated and aloof, perhaps seeking spiritual guidance,—
as Lincoln did more than once and Robert E. Lee is known to have
spent the night in prayer before his duty was revealed to him that his
allegiance was to his State and not to his Government,—Mr. Wilson
took counsel of himself but none other, and the people believed he
would reveal himself in the forthcoming speech. . . .
Mr. Wilson prepared his speech before the news of the sinking of the
Lusitania reached him; segregated, he still had means of knowing
the temper of the country, and he must have known with what intense
anxiety the world awaited his deliverance and the construction that
would be put on his every word. The speech as written was not
changed. He repeated what he had said many times since his election;
he dwelt upon the mission of America to humanize the world, its duty
to set an example of peace to the world; he pictured America created
to unite men and to elevate mankind, dwelling especially, as applicable
to his audience, on the obligation of every man to dedicate himself
to America and to leave all other countries behind, and then he
astonished every one and amazed the country no less than the entire
world by saying:
“The example of American must bea special example. The example
of America must be the example not merely of peace because it will
546 President Woodrow Wilson [r915
not fight, but of peace because peace is the healing and elevating
influence of the world and strife is not. There is such a thing as a man
being too proud to fight. There is such a thing as a nation being so
right that it does not need to convince others by force that it is right.”
That was the only reference to the thing that engrossed all men.
The President’s speech was published in full in the leading newspapers,
but that sentence—“ there is such a thing as a man being too proud to
fight”’—stripped of its context, was singled out; it was flung on the
telegraph wires and cables to the far corners of the earth, and it was
accepted by the world as the President’s reply to Germany. Germany
had sunk the Lusitania, Germany had murdered American men and
women and little children, and America, speaking through her Presi-
dent, could find no word of scorn or condemnation for the guilty, no
pity for the dead, no promise they should be avenged; it could feel
no generous prompting of passion, but was content proudly to glory
in her cowardice.
Bitterly attacked in his own country, lampooned satirized and
jeered at abroad, any other man temperamentally different would
have offered explanation or defense, or at least through his friends
sought to soften the harsh judgment of the world and make it plain
that what he said and the interpretation given to it did him an in-
justice. Mr. Wilson did nothing. With what might very well have
been thought the superb indifferency of disdain, with what the public
might very well believe was utter contempt for what it said or thought
or believed,—but which, in fact, was an extraordinary exhibition of
courage and self-control,—Mr. Wilson dismissed the matter as if it
were too trivial to require further attention. He had unlimited confi-
dence, it was a confidence almost fatalistic, in the ultimate triumph
of right and reason and the victory of morality in the long struggle.
Lincoln, we are told, as an advocate of the abolition of slavery and
prohibition saw that they could not be hastened, that they could be
safely agitated but must not be prematurely pressed, and it was
wisdom to wait until “in God’s own time they will be organized into
law and thus be woven into the fabric of our institutions.” Mr. Wilson
had the more difficult task not to crystallize moral sentiment into
law, which is the foundation on which all law rests, for in a free country
law is simply the concrete expression of morality, but to weld passion,
prejudice and self-interest into a great moral renunciation.
No. 130] “Too Proud to Fight” 547
There is a curious thing in connection with the President’s use of
the phrase “too proud to fight” which is worth mention and is of
interest to the psychologist. Mr. Wilson is a Southerner by birth,
descent and tradition, and although all his life from early manhood
has been lived in the North, heredity is ineradicable. To the South-
erner, especially the Southerner of the generation of Mr. Wilson’s
childhood, “proud” has a different meaning and is used in a different
sense than it is by the Northerner. Men of the North seldom talk
about their pride; men of the South frequently do, and they mean
not pride in the Shaksperian sense, but in the same sense that the
American of the North or the Englishman does self-respect. A
Southerner will say, “I am too proud to do it,” a Northerner or an
Englishman would say, “My self-respect will not allow it.” It was
undoubtedly in that sense that Mr. Wilson, subconsciously reacting
to his Southern heritage, used “proud,” meaning that there are occa-
sions when a nation, no matter how great the temptation, must not
fight, just as an individual, to save his own self-respect, must not
engage in a brawl.
It will not be necessary critically to consider the long correspondence
that passed between the American and German Governments, but
the sinking of the Lusitania brought the first break in Mr. Wilson’s
Cabinet and led to the resignation of Mr. Bryan on the following
eighth of June.
A. Maurice Low, Woodrow Wilson: An Interpretation (Boston, Little, Brown,
1918), 165-172 passim.
548 President Woodrow Wilson [r917
131. Leadership of Woodrow Wilson (1917)
BY EDGAR E. ROBINSON AND VICTOR J. WEST
Robinson is Professor of American History at Stanford University. West (1880-
1927) was at the time of writing Professor of Political Science at Northwestern
University Bibliography: Ray S. Baker, World War and World Settlement (1923);
John Spencer Bassett, Our War with Germany (1919); J. B. Brown Scott, A Survey
of International Relations Between the United States and Germany, August I, 1914,
to April 6, 1917 (1917); William E. Dodd, Woodrow Wilson and His Work (1920);
Robert Lansing, The Big Four and Others of the Peace Conference (1921); Lansing,
The Peace Negotiations (1921); Charles Seymour, editor, The Intimate Papers of
Colonel House (1926).
T is now possible to state definitely the several elements of which
President Wilson’s foreign policy was compounded. There were
in the first place the fundamental beliefs of the man himself—the
unshakable convictions which had become his after years of study
of the efforts of the peoples of the world to govern themselves. The
primary and basic principle was a faith in democracy, both as an ideal
and as a practice. Upon the soundness of the democratic principle
he rested all his other beliefs.
Because he believed in democracy he believed that every nation
should regard every other nation as its equal; that fair dealing was the
best means of preserving friendship and peace between nations; that
the guidance of established law was essential to international justice
and fair dealing; and that, if unhappily disputes should arise between
nations, the proper means for settling them was a reasoned considera-
tion before a court of arbitration of the controversies in the light of
the law. Finally, he believed not that force should never be used by
nations against each other, but that it should be relied upon only to
combat criminal aggression and to further great humanitarian pur-
poses.
Principles alone, however, did not make the Wilson foreign policy.
His beliefs and his own actions based thereon the President could
control; there were also external modifying circumstances for the
most part outside of his direction. Chief of these were obviously
the events in international relations having their origin in other gov-
ernments or nations,—events which could not possibly be foreseen
or controlled by the President, and which thus constituted the chief
No. 131] Leadership of Woodrow Wilson 549
danger to the successful application of principles. Only slightly less
difficult to control were the acts and speeches of United States officers
at home and abroad and the activities of the governments of the
various members of the American union. There were, moreover, the
constitution and laws of this country, the treaties, the obligations in-
curred by previous administrations, and the accepted rules of inter-
national law,—in brief the whole body of public law which set the
boundaries to the exercise of power by the President.
There was still another element conditioning the direction of foreign
affairs by President Wilson. That was the public opinion of the
nation, with its almost imperceptible and sometimes incomprehensible
shifts. It was true of course that, in the performance of duties imposed
upon him by the Constitution, the chief executive of the United States
might by the direction of diplomacy and otherwise have brought his
country to a pass where it was dangerous to go forward and dishon-
ourable to withdraw,—all without reference to the attitude of the
public mind. But President Wilson’s faith in democracy was too deep
to permit the exclusion of foreign affairs from as much popular con-
trol as was possible. When he moved he wished to move in accord
with the desires of the people, and he was quick to realize what moves
in international relations the people would approve. He was not un-
mindful, however, of the unrivalled opportunity for great leadership
which the presidency offered its incumbent, and he did not neglect
this opportunity. His speeches and even his formal state papers,
his messages and proclamations, seem to have been directed toward
informing and moulding public opinion.
A careful and unbiased study of the record of President Wilson
reveals convincingly the sincerity with which he held the principles
he affirmed. It was not mere facility of expression which made it
possible for him to restate in so many ways and with such telling
effect the time-honoured ideals of a great democratic people. No
charlatan of politics, however facile, however adroit, could have
maintained his hold upon public opinion through four such trying
years. The profound convictions of a scientist as to the fundamentals
of political philosophy, wrought into his thinking in the years when
there was no thought of his entering public life, were the guides Presi-
dent Wilson followed as leader and servant of his people.
It is important to know that President Wilson sincerely believed in
550 President Woodrow Wilson [r917
what he professed to believe. But the true significance attaches to
his rigid adherence to his beliefs in practice. Others have held the
same principles, and quite as sincerely. If they have rarely applied
them as practical guides in foreign relations it is because there was
lacking either the intellectual ability to perceive the necessity for so
applying them or the moral courage to follow the difficult road that
must be travelled in so applying them. It remains to be shown how
President Wilson consistently and faithfully lived up to his professions
at a time when the opportunity for service was so great and failure to
serve would have been so disastrous.
His faith in the democratic principle led him habitually to submit
his foreign policy to the test of public opinion in the United States;
if public opinion did not support him, his policy must be modifed or
the public mind educated; and his way of educating public opinion
was to announce a general policy and allow it to be discussed among
the people. His belief in democracy impelled him to insist on granting
to the Filipino people a great measure of self-government and to
promise them a still wider participation as they learned to use their
new powers. It impelled him likewise to leave the Mexican people
free as far as possible to work out their own solution—as the European
nations had for centuries been doing—of their own problems. And
finally it impelled him to make that important distinction between the
German people and the German Imperial government on which he
based his declaration that German guarantees of peace could be ac-
cepted only when supported by the unmistakable will of the German
people.
His belief in the equality of nations led him to feel as much pride in
the fact that the first of the “ Bryan peace treaties” to be ratified was
with Salvador, as he would have felt had it been with Great Britain.
It inevitably impelled him to refuse to permit the United States to
assume such responsibilities toward its own citizens that it must incur
the risk of interfering with the political life of another people; better
it was that the less advanced peoples of the world should do without
tke help of America than that the United States in order to give its
aid should seem to take a mortgage on their future independence and
integrity.
His reliance on justice and fair dealing between nations moved him
to be scrupulously punctilious in the observance of treaty obligations,
No. 131] Leadership of Woodrow Wilson one
as when he insisted upon the repeal of the tolls exemption clause of
the Panama Canal Act. It led him, even in the absence of treaties
and when the right of the United States was unquestioned, to deal
with other nations according to principles of equity, as, for example,
in trying to meet the complaint of the Japanese against the laws of
California and of the United States. It obliged him while professing
friendship for a nation to actually act toward it in a friendly manner;
it was impossible for him while trying to conduct the case of the United
States against Germany in 1915 by diplomatic means to have been
all the time preparing and strengthening and mobilizing the military
and naval power of the United States.
His adherence to established law led him to insist that the “orderly
processes”’ of constitutional method be followed in changing adminis-
trations in the states of the new world; appearance of intrigue and
assassination in the elevation of Huerta to the presidency of Mexico
could not be condoned by recognition of him. The same principle
obliged him to insist on the strict observance by all belligerents in the
Great War of the rights of neutrals under the sacred agreements and
customs of international law, and that those rules should not be altered
in any respect by any one belligerent nor to the detriment of neutral
rights by all the belligerents.
His conviction that arbitration was the most desirable means of
composing international disagreements led his administration not only
to renew the arbitration treaties concluded by previous administra-
tions, but to take a step forward by negotiating a series of treaties
providing for “commissions of inquiry.” It led him, and would have
done so had there been no agreement to arbitrate, to defer the settle-
ment of disputes with Great Britain until after the war when matters
at issue could be decided on a basis of justice. It impelled him to
propose mediation between the warring powers of Europe and to
accept without hesitation the mediation of Latin America in the
dispute with Mexico.
Finally, his belief that war should not be resorted to until other
means of resolving differences between nations had been exhausted,
and then only for purposes which were bound up with the welfare of
mankind, led him to use every diplomatic method for bringing the
German government to realize the gravity of its offence against civili-
zation and humanity, and to defer actual warfare until the American
B62 Presiaent Woodrow Wilson [1917
people could assure themselves that they were really to fight for a
great world-wide and age-old human purpose.
The moves in Wilson’s foreign policy, with few and justified excep-
tions, were consistent with each other. Had he not taken for the
United States the ground he did take in 1913 and held it during four
years in spite of enormous difficulties, the United States could not have
stood on that ground and fought from that vantage point in 1917.
Had he not yielded to Great Britain the utmost of its rights under
treaty with the United States he could not have later honestly de-
manded from Great Britain and from Germany the observance of all
neutral rights under international obligations. Had he cynically
ignored the results of official iniquity in Mexico in the first weeks of
his administration he could not four years later convincingly have
condemned—as he did in his note to Pope Benedict XV—the gross
iniquity of officialdom in Germany. Had his government ever in-
fringed upon the sovereignty of less powerful peoples he could not,
without exciting derision, have ever championed the rights of Poland
and Belgium and the Balkan states. Had the United States, under
his presidency, demanded indemnities of Mexico or attempted by
conquest to annex Mexican territory, the United States could not
have admonished the world that there should be no conquests as the
result of the Great War. Had this administration not dealt fairly
with the Mexicans, the Chinese, the Filipinos in the first years of his
responsibilities, he could not have expected the English, the Russians,
the French, least of all the Germans, to rely with confidence on his
assurance of intent to deal fairly with them in the later years. In
short, had he not, during his entire incumbency, conducted himself
as the first servant of a democracy should, he could not have expected
to carry conviction when, on April 2, 1917, he asked the United States
to go to war to make the world “safe for democracy.”
If President Wilson’s foreign policy had led immediately to the
restoration of order in Mexico and had secured from European nations
the demands of the United States without involving it in the conflict,
it would have been hailed as tremendously successful. But it would
have merited praise no more than it did deserve it, those results not
having been accomplished. The motives which actuated it, the ends
which it tried to achieve, the principles which guided it and the means
which it used would have been precisely the same. There are so many
No. 132] An Estimate of Woodrow Wilson 553
variables in the facts of national and international affairs and their
relationships are so complex, that the same principles applied by the
same methods in two apparently precisely similar sets of circumstances
may work to a happy result in the one case, and by the merest acci-
dent, to an unhappy one in the other. The principles and methods
alone are under true control of statesmen, and they ought to be judged,
not primarily by immediate results, but with reference to their per-
manent value to serve the desirable permanent purposes they are
calculated to serve.
But the results of the Wilson policy themselves justify the policy.
It was a result of that policy that the American people finally saw the
imperative necessity for their participation in the Great War. It was
a result of that policy that the war, a European quarrel originating
obscurely in petty dynastic ambition, in greedy economic rivalry,
and in base national hatred, was transformed, by the entrance of the
United States, into a world conflict with the united forces of democ-
racy and international peace ranged squarely against autocracy and
continued world struggle. It was a result of that policy that the
United States,—not England, not France, not even new Russia,—
became the leader, the bearer of the “great light for the guidance of
the nations,” in the magnificent new venture of democracy to league
the peoples of the world together to serve the ends of peace and justice.
Edgar E. Robinson and Victor J. West, The Foreign Policy of Woodrow Wilson
(New York, Macmillan, 1917), 149-157.
— p c
132. An Estimate of Woodrow Wilson (1918)
BY EX-SECRETARY DAVID F. HOUSTON (1926)
Houston was Secretary of Agriculture 1913-1920, and of the Treasury, 1920
1921, in Wilson’s Cabinet.—Bibliography as in No. 129 above.
SAID that Woodrow Wilson was a Scotch-Presbyterian Christian.
With him God was an immanent presence. He was with him in
the White House, and if he could discover what He wanted, he gave
no heed to what anybody else or everybody else waited or thought.
554 President Woodrow Wilson [1918
Reference has been made to the meeting of the Cabinet before our
forces took Vera Cruz, when he startled the Cabinet by asking those
who still believed in prayer to pray over the matter. That he did so
constantly admits of no doubt. Mr. Wilson believed in an Over-rul-
ing Providence. This is revealed in many of his addresses, and there
is abundant evidence of his solemn reliance on Its guidance. . . .
It follows that Mr. Wilson had a strong belief in the might of right.
In all my contacts with him, in everything I heard him say, I was im-
pressed by this more than by anything else, viz: That he was interested
above all things in discovering what was right: what was the right
thing to say and the right course to pursue. He was nervous only
about the possibility of being wrong. The only real appeal one could
make to him was on the right or wrong of a matter. He had little
stomach for compromises of any sort, and none for compromises which
had a shade of the compromising in them. He was content when he
felt that he had arrived at the heart of a matter and had the right
of it. He was then prepared to go ahead regardless of consequences.
In his assessment of measures, personalities, personal equations,
personal ambitions, and self-seeking were ruthlessly brushed aside.
He had, in his processes and actions, in very high degree, the element
of objectivity. In all his thinking and actions in the field of govern-
ment and economics, his mind directed itself to the merit of the
question, and he assumed that others were equally unselfish and
devoted- inii:
Mr. Wilson had something more than this objectivity in all public
matters. He was strikingly selfless, or unselfish. He had no personau
ends to serve and no thought of attempting to serve them. It was
difficult to get him to take anv interest in himself; and in my eight
years of contact with him, it never occurred to me at any time to
raise a question as to how a proposed course of action might affect
him or his fortunes. I knew that he would resent it. On a few occa-
sions, when someone ventured a suggestion of the kind, he met with
a very prompt and stern rebuke. Mr. Wilson worked for the approval
of his own conscience and for that of mankind, or as he expressed it,
for the verdict of history.
He was utterly sincere when he asserted that he had never been
interested in fighting for himself, but that he was always intensely
interested in fighting for the things he believed in. He was speaking
No. 132] An Estimate of Woodrow Wilson 555
naturally when he said that it was a matter of personal indifference
to him what the verdict of the people was in 1916.
Never at any time did he attempt to make personal capital out of
his high position. He was humbled rather than exalted by it, and his
keen wits penetrated quickly the atmosphere with which lesser spirits
surrounded themselves when they descended upon Washington in
their official dignity. . . .
Wilson could not stoop to employ the arts which many men use to
gain favour and popularity. He had little aptitude for the game of
practical politics and resented its practices. He was weak in the
technique of managing and manipulating men, and he had no desire
to gain strength in this art. He relied on the strength of the cause in
which he was interested.
Wilson was sensitive, shy, and reserved. He was a gentleman and
could not and would not try to capitalize his personal advantages.
There were intimacies to which he, like other true gentlemen, would
not admit the public, and he naturally assumed that right-minded
men would not seek to be admitted to them. These were inhibitions
resulting from temperament and generations of good breeding. He
could only with difficulty attempt to reveal himself, and when he did
so, he had only moderate success. . . .
The difficulty Wilson had in freely meeting people, aside from his
temperament, was reinforced by a certain philosophy he entertained,
by the stress under which he worked and by his physical state. He
would not seek out men to consult with, but, within the limits of
his time and strength, he did see people who sought him on business.
He would play no favourites; and I think the fact that he could not
see certain individuals, whom he might have liked to confer with more
frequently without seeming to play favourites and creating ill feeling,
caused him to limit his contacts; and on account of the fact that he
was never very robust and that the demands on him were terrific,
he felt it imperative to limit his social contacts to the minimum.
Wilson was undoubtedly aware of the popular impression that he
was not approachable. In his address to the Press Club in New York
in June, 1916, he touched upon this matter, saying:
“T have heard some say that I was not accessible to them, and when
T inquired into it, I found they meant that I did not personally invite
them. They did not know how to come without being invited, and
550 President Woodrow Wilson [1918
they did not care to come if they came on the same terms with every-
body else, knowing that everybody else was welcome whom I had
time to confer with.” ...
Wilson belonged to the aristocracy of brains. He was an intel-
lectual thoroughbred. His mind, which was of high quality, had.
been refined and disciplined by years of hard study and by years of
teaching. His faculties were always thoroughly at his command.
He did not have to labour and strain for results. He was quick to
grasp the essential points in a complex problem or set of facts, to get
to the heart of the matter under discussion, to see facts in their
proper relation, and to arrive at a sound conclusion; and long and
careful training, combined with natural talent, gave him the ability
to express his thoughts tersely, artistically, and eloquently, with-
out apparent effort and without prolonged preparation. In all the
years in which I listened to him talking, informally, in Cabinet meet-
ings, or elsewhere, I never detected a word or phrase out of place, or
heard him use a bungling sentence. He was one of three men I have
known whose conversation or address, taken down and reported
by an intelligent stenographer, could be published without any real
need of editing. The other two were his uncle, Dr. James Woodrow,
and President Eliot. What this means, even the average well-trained
man well knows. Most of them probably experience a feeling of
humiliation when their spontaneous utterances are taken by stenog-
raphers and returned to them. They find more difficulty in straighten-
ing out their expressions than they would in rewriting the state-
menten i
Certainly, in point of formal education, Wilson was the best trained
man who ever occupied the White House. He had received the
best training that American universities could furnish, and he had
supplemented this by long years of study as a professor and as a
lecturer. He wasa student of history. He saw things in their perspec-
tive in systematic, orderly fashion. He knew the limitations of things.
He had been a profound student of American institutions and prob-
lems, and had developed knowledge of foreign governments and his-
tory. Mr. Wilson was a pioneer among Americans in the study of
foreign arrangements and governmental policies. His book, “The
State,” dealing with comparative governments, was the first in the
field; and Wilson was instructing America about foreign matters
No. 132] An Estimate of Woodrow Wilson 6S7
before ost of his critics had escaped from the bondage of provincial-
ism.
It was a genuine pleasure to talk with Wilson, to engage in confer-
ence with him and to discuss light or serious, simple or complex
matters with him. He could be light and gay. Nobody could or did
tell so many gocd or apt stories as he; and yet he did not manufacture
stories or lug them in by the ears. They appeared naturally, and they
came quickly; and his sallies, while seldom biting and never bitter,
were keen and enlightening. He was witty rather than humorous,
in this characteristic resembling the best English and New England
thinkers and speakers rather than the typical American. His wit
never verged on the doubtful or the vulgar. He naturally resented
vulgarity and irreverence.
One reason why it was a pleasure to discuss matters with Wilson
is that he was quick and did not have to be educated. One could
assume more with him than with almost any other person I have
known. And he was patient, very patient, patient even of dullness.
He was much more patient than I would dream of being, or ever
desired to be. I saw him many a time sit and listen with courtesy
to long-drawn-out statements by men of mediocre capacity and little
information, who had had scant opportunity to form useful judgments,
and who usually obscured the subject at every turn. Not infre-
quently I almost writhed in agony and ill-concealed irritation, but
Mr. Wilson never gave a sign. I have, therefore, always been greatly
amused by representations that he would not take counsel or listen
to advice. Some of those, including one or more members of his
Cabinet, who gave currency to this view, could only mean that he
did not frequently take their advice or heed their views; and he was
wise, because their views, as a rule, were of little assistance, their
knowledge was scanty and impressionistic, and their judgment bad,
and yet they desired to seem to be in the President’s intimate counsel
and to be in the limelight.
It is not true that Wilson did not consult his Cabinet on new de-
partures and policy, or on important matters. He did; and he would
have done so more freely had he not known that the very ones—and
they were few in number—who criticized him for failure to do so
made it difficult for him to do so by their persistent practice of herald-
ing everything to the public, whether it was wise or timely or not.
558 President Woodrow Wilson [1918
And, Mr. Wilson was not what I would call obstinate. He was
slow in arriving at conclusions. He took pains to get light and all the
facts; and then, when he thought he had all he could get or needed,
he made up his mind. Then he was difficult to move. This was as
it should have been. I admired him for this trait. He was difficult
to move because it was not easy to give him better reasons for a
different course than he had for the one he proposed to take, but
he was not immovable. Better reasons and sound reasoning would
alter his views, and changed conditions would modify them. A
number of times I witnessed him change his views quickly, views
which he strongly entertained. He altered his views on preparedness.
He altered his views on proposed statements, such as notes to Ger-
many; and he swung round completely on the proposal for a tariff
commission. . .
But, as a writer for the untrained and undiscriminating reader
and as a speaker, Wilson was not without a marked defect. He
said too much in too few words and, when he had finished a thought,
he let it drop. Several times I have heard him laughingly remark in
Cabinet meetings that he did not care how much anyone said provided
he said it in a few words. He studied his subject carefully, digested
all the facts he could assemble, and then painted his picture with as
few strokes as possible. His statements were based on wide knowl-
edge and were the result of prolonged reflection. He uttered con-
clusions and did not take the trouble to reveal the steps he had taken
or his mental processes. He wrote from a broad background of history
and literature, and, not infrequently, his forms of expression were un-
conventional and not familiar to the average man, expressions whose
origin and implication few of his half-educated audiences knew or
could grasp. He habitually paid his audiences the compliment of
appealing to their intelligence and of assuming that they knew more
than they did.
Wilson coined very few phrases. Only a few of them struck the
popular mind. Some of them were unfortunate. Some of them it
would have been better if he had not used. Two of them, “Too proud
to fight” and “Peace without victory,” were the causes of violent
criticisms, as was the sentence, “The objects which the statesmen of
the belligerents on both sides have in mind are virtually the same,
as stated in general terms to their own people.” . .
No. 132] An Estimate of Woodrow Wilson 550
It was particularly unfortunate that he used the phrase, “Too proud
to fight” just when he did. At the time he was being criticized for
timidity and lack of understanding of the issues of the struggle. It
was used in an address in Philadelphia, May ro, 1915, only three days.
after the sinking of the Lusitania, and three days before the first
Lusitania note was sent. ...
Of course, Wilson, when he was speaking, did not have the Lusitania
controversy in mind. With his customary single-track habit of
thought, he was dealing, before foreign-born citizens after a naturaliza-
tion ceremony, with the meaning of America and with their responsi-
bilities. His mind easily dropped into an expression, a close parallei
to which he was familiar with because of his long residence in the
South. At the time he lived in the South duelling was still practiced.
. . . I had frequently heard men say that they had too much self-
respect to be insulted by persons of a certain sort or to notice a chal-
lenge from them—they were too proud to notice or to fight such per-
sons. Wilson’s full thought he expressed as follows: “The example of
America must be a special example. The example of America must
be the example, not merely of peace because it will not fight, but of
peace because peace is the healing and elevating influence of the world
and strife. Is not there such a thing as a man being too proud to fight?
There is such a thing as a nation being so right that it does not need
to convince others by force that it is right.” Very little of this utter-
ance, except the phrase itself, was ever referred to or published. Par-
tisans used the phrase out of its context for their own purposes. Nei-
ther was the trouble taken to point out that this same thought was
not new with Wilson, and that he had employed it at least twice
belote a a3
The use of the phrase ‘‘ Peace without victory ” also was unfortunate.
. . . What Wilson, of course, had in mind was that the peace which
should follow victory should be a just peace and, therefore, a per-
manent peace, and that it was of the utmost importance that when the
victory was won the victors should be reasonable. He, of course,
apprehended that they would not be reasonable; and what occurred
in Paris and what has occurred since have demonstrated that his
apprehensions were well grounded. . . .
It was pure tragedy that a man like Wilson, who knew what war
means, who had witnessed the horrors of its aftermath, who detested
560 President Woodrow Wilson [191%
it as a method of settling difficulties and thought it stupid, should have
been called upon to lead this nation into war. He spoke from his
heart and experience when he said to Congress, in his War Message:
“Tt is a fearful thing to lead this great nation into war”; and he held
back for more than two and a half years for many reasons. I thought
at the time, and still think, that he was right in his thinking and his
action at each stage of the developments. .. .
Naturally, the situation became tense when the Lusitania was sunk.
Many citizens, especially in Eastern cities, were for immediate action.
. . . I was in the West for five weeks following this tragedy. I
realized clearly then that the majority of the people were not even
thinking of this nation’s entering the struggle. I was in most parts
of the Union several times between 1915 and the spring of 1917, and
at no stage, up to that time, were the masses of the people ready for
this nation’s participation. Wilson, too, had full knowledge of the
state of mind of the great majority of the people... .
Wilson led the nation into war at the right moment—the moment
when Germany abandoned all pretences, broke her promises, declared
her intention to resume unrestricted submarine warfare, and under-
took to dictate the course we should follow. Then Uncle Sam rolled
up his sleeves and made it plain that he was “‘free, white, and twenty-
one” and would see whether anybody could tell him what he could or
could not do. From this moment, Wilson had back of him a united
and determined people, and he knew it.
Wilson hated the thought of war. He knew what it meant, but he
accepted the challenge with the same poise and calm courage that he
had manifested in the more difficult former trial of maintaining peace.
Wilson’s knowledge of the meaning of war and what the new task
involved and his boldness were made manifest at the outset and were
evident at each stage of the development, from first to last. There was
no hesitating. He did not waver for an instant, and he had at no time
any doubt as to the issue. With him it was a foregone conclusion.
There was in him the spirit of the Crusader and of the Roundhead.
He would have immediate and good execution of the enemy, for the
good of their souls and for the glory of God... .
Wilson’s determination and success in keeping the hands of the
politicians off the army and the navy will be rated one of his great
contributions to the nation in this time of stress. For it, Wilson is
No. 132] An Estimate of Woodrow Wilson 56r
entitled to the gratitude of all the people. Itis to be hoped that the
precedent he set will be followed for all time.
Wilson habitually took the long view. He preferred to go down to
defeat fighting for a cause which he knew some day would triumph
than to gain a victory of an issue which he was confident would in
time be shown to be false. He played for the verdict of history.
What history will say of Wilson, I do not know. That he will figure
largely in it is obvious. It is unavoidable that he should. He was a
central figure in this nation, and one of the central figures of the
world in the period of its most colossal tragedy. Quoting him, I may
say:
“ We find every truly great mind identified with some special cause.
His purposes are steadfastly set in some definite direction. The career
which he works out for himself constitutes so important a part of the
history of his times that to dissociate him from his surroundings were
as impossible as it would be undesirable.”
From Eight Years with Wilson’s Cabinet, by David F. Houston (copyright 1926,
Doubleday, Page and Company), II, 159-254 passim.
PART IX
THE ARTS AND SCIENCES
CHAPTER XXV — PHILANTHROPY AND
CULTURAL ADVANCE
133. The Pan-American Exposition (1901)
BY WALTER HINES PAGE
Page was a journalist and writer; editor at one time of the Forum; later of the
Atlantic. He was a member of the publishing firm of Doubleday, Page & Company.
He was made Ambassador to Great Britain by President Wilson, and incurred
criticism by his failure to observe strict personal neutrality during the period be-
fore American entry into the World War. For his account of his problems at the
outbreak of war, see No. 166 below. For an adverse criticism of his conduct as
Ambassador, see No. 167 below.—Bibliography on expositions: American Year
Book and contemporary periodicals.
5 HATEVER else we may do,” said one of the directors of
the Pan-American Exposition, at Buffalo, when the plans for
it were under discussion, “we must make a beautiful spectacle.”
This purpose was never for a moment forgotten; it became the domi-
nant purpose; and it is as an outdoor spectacle that the Exposition
is most novel and noteworthy. It is its spectacular features that will
be longest remembered and that will have the greatest effect on the
popular mind. And it is a sight worth traveling across the continent
to see—a sight such as nobody ever saw before. . . .
The most impressive view—the view that one ought to take first
in order to get the full effect of the whole scene—is from the Triumphal
Bridge just at dusk when the lights are first turned on. The great
towers of the bridge make a dignified, stately approach to the court
with its play-day effect—its domes and pinnacles and warm colors,
the fountains, and the great electric tower as the climax of it all. You
562
No. 133] The Pan-American Exposition 563
have hardly realized the scene as it appears in the dusk, when on the
rows of posts tiny dots of light appear in clusters, like little pink buds
in a nosegay. You become gently aware of similar pink points on the
tower—apparently millions of them; and on either side they outline
all the buildings—in rows about the panels on the domes, under arches,
over windows, everywhere. The buildings themselves seem for an
instant to become invisible, and you see only their outlines marked in
these tiny dots of fire. And the court seems larger than it was by sun-
light, for you seem to see a whole city of towers and domes, and eaves
and doors, outlined in sparks. Then the pink points grow brighter
and change their hue, and in another moment the full illumination
bursts forth, and the whole great court becomes luminous with a soft
brilliancy that does not tire the eye. And it is a new kind of brilliancy.
You are face to face with the most magnificent and artistic nocturnal
scene that man has ever made. It is an effect so novel and so gentle in
its glow that you think of fairy-land, not a fairy-land of tinsel, but
the fairy-land that you once believed in.
I had the pleasure to see this illumination first in the company of a
child of ten years. She stood for a minute in speechless wonder. Then
she cried “Oh, isn’t it beautiful!” And she danced in forgetfulness
of herself and asked “Is it really real?” For the sensation is of an
optical illusion. You ask yourself if it be not a trick played on you
with mirrors and lenses. But, when you turn your eyes away from the
brilliancy of the electric tower and look down the long court of build-
ings in the soft glow, the colors are more beautiful than they are by
sunlight. Nor do you forget that the chromatic note of green of
Niagara, and that the beautiful world of light is the illuminating
power of the great cataract. If you could forget this fact, there is
just enough noise of fountains to remind you of it, and symbolical
representations of the falls in sculpture greet you as you gaze at the
tower. It is the Great Cataract silently expressing its power in a soft,
fairy-like, nocturnal, outdoor scene of wonderful illumination.
This spectacle is all the more worth seeing because no satisfactory
notion either of the color or of the illumination can be conveyed by
picture or by description. It must be seen or it will be missed. It
gives an impression that one is likely to carry always in one’s memory.
And it is this nocturnal spectacle that is the peculiar triumph of the
Exposition.
564 Philanthropy and Cultural Advance [190%
The builders of the Exposition planned one spectacle to which every-
thing converges, and the means by which they have produced it are
architecture, illumination, fountain-effects, statuary, color and hor-
ticultural and floral adornment. The freedom from precedent with
which they have worked is remarkable.
. . . A visitor would do well, whatever gate he enters, to go first
to the statue of Washington, which is at the southern end of the
grounds. From this statue an avenue leads over the Triumphal
Bridge into the main court and to the Electric Tower.
Starting at the statue of Washington, the avenue leads northward
up a gentle incline between rows of columns and between the four
great towers of the bridge. These towers are crowned with equestrian
figures of a standard bearer, and are ornamented with symbolical
groups of statuary. One great pillar by its sculpture and its inscription
stands for Patriotism, another for Liberty, and so on.
The canal on either side of the bridge broadens into a lake, and
symbolical figures of great beauty by Mr. Martiny represent the
Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean. By this approach over the
bridge to the main court a single view takes in the whole scene, and
the unity and simplicity of the ground plan become obvious. There
is one long court running from south to north from the Triumphal
Bridge to the Electric Tower. With its approach, and with the plaza
behind the tower, this court is very much longer than the central
court of any preceding exposition. Its width admits the lakes and
fountains in the centre, and broad ways on either side, which give the
buildings and the tower room enough for effective display.
The transverse court (east and west) intersects the main court just
north of the bridge. Their intersection makes the great area of the
esplanade, which will hold a quarter of a million spectators. The
transverse courts end in curved groups of buildings, the Government
group on the east, and on the west the buildings given to Horticulture,
Mines and the Graphic Arts; and at each curved end of this trans-
verse court are a lake, a sunken garden and groups of statuary.
Along the main court towards the tower are the six other principal
buildings—first the two octagonal domed buildings, the Temple of
Music, and facing it the Ethnology buildings; then facing each other
across the main court, the building for Machinery and Manufactures
and the Liberal Arts building; next the Electricity building, and
No. 134] Theodore Thomas, Orchestral Conductor 565
facing it the Agricultural building. The great Electric Tower stands
in the space between these. Beyond and on either side are restaurant
buildings, and back of all the great gates and the connecting colon-
nade.
This is the general plan. And you can see it all from one point in
front of the Triumphal Bridge. Outside these courts lie many build-
ings and the greater part of the area covered by the Exposition. But
it were better at first to ignore these; for standing anywhere in the
court the buildings outside it are properly shut from view. You are
aware only of this one spectacle, and all the buildings and all their
accessories—lakes, fountains, statuary, colonnades—are a unit. They
have been treated as a unit by engineers, architects, sculptors, deco-
rators, electricians.
And it is necessary to realize how large this area is which has had
this unified treatment. The space in the Court of Honor at Chicago
was 563,000 square feet; the court area at Paris was 720,000; and the
court space at Buffalo is 1,400,o0o—nearly three times as great as the
Court of Honor at Chicago. By daylight. it seems smaller than it is;
and by the electric light it seems very much larger.
Walter H. Page, The Pan-American Exposition, in World’s Work, August, 1901
(New York), II, 1015-1024 passim.
— eo
134. Theodore Thomas, Orchestral Conductor (1905)
BY CHARLES EDWARD RUSSELL (1927)
Russell is a journalist, and author of many books on political and sociological
subjects. Theodore Thomas (1835-1905) was the first really great American con-
ductor—an eminent musician, a brilliant leader. He was responsible, among other
innovations, for the now common custom of having the players of stringed instru-
ments in the orchestra move their bows in unison.
OST of my time from 1900 to 1905 being cast upon Chicago, I
was enabled to renew my acquaintance with Mr. Thomas
there and to follow his work. He was then giving regular concerts on
the Friday afternoon and Saturday evening of each week through a
season of twenty-four weeks. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and
566 Philanthropy and Cultural Advance [1905
Thursday mornings were spent in rehearsal, ten o’clock to noon. The
concerts were in the great Chicago Auditorium; the rehearsals upon
its stage.
As a rule, outsiders were not admitted to these practising bouts,
but by hard petitioning I won an exception in my favor and formed a
habit of attending at least one rehearsal every week. In that vast
space I sat the one auditor of a deeply interesting procedure. In many
ways, it had profit; for one, it made me better acquainted with the
peculiar mind and methods of Theodore Thomas than I could have
become from a hundred mere conversations.
I was not long in discovering one of the secrets of that extraordinary
command over his players so many observers had talked about. Aside
from the recondite psychology of a dominant nature, which never
will be revealed to us, the thing was simple enough. He never once
assumed the attitude that he wanted anything done only because he
wanted it done.
“Do this because I tell you to do it,” was never once suggested or
hinted. His attitude was always, “We shall do this a certain way
because we all know it is the best way and we are equally interested
in having this work perfect.” He did not say these words, you will
understand, but conveyed always the sense of them: an odd illustra-
tion of spiritual democracy, if I may use that phrase, for nothing else
can express it. From reading Stephen Fiske and others I had been
led to expect a Termagant; a kind of shouting, brow-beating, fault-
finding, foot-stamping mogul of the baton. I was astonished to find
that ordinarily he was the gentlest and most lovable old autocrat that
ever went in shoe leather. At the same time, he was absolutely busi-
nesslike, absolutely certain of himself, firm, rigorous, insatiable of
effort, but even when he called an individual player to task for error,
I think he never aroused resentment in the wandering one. There
was no humiliation in his corrective ardor, and that made the differ-
ence. After this I hardly have need to say that he never raved up and
down the stage tearing his hair and cursing, as conductors of the old
time were pictured, perhaps libelously. The Thomasian idea of vent-
ing wrath upon one that had forfeited his esteem was the sentence of
excommunication. “Let him never speak to me again.”
He displayed one attribute in his rehearsals that I have not heard
of in other conductors, though it may not be so uncommon as I think.
No. 134] Theodore Thomas, Orchestral Conductor 507
He seemed to know by an infallible instinct when the players were
becoming weary and needed relaxation. It was remarkable to see
how completely and quickly he changed his bearing at such a time.
The moment before he had been urging them forward, repeating
passages, softening shadows, bringing intensities into proper relations,
polishing a phrase until it glittered. Now he dropped the baton,
leaned over his stand and told a funny story or cracked a joke. When
everybody had laughed and stretched out and known a moment’s
ease, he resumed the work as before. It struck me as strange that he
could divine so surely when these periods of rest were needed, and
much more wonderful that he could at will throw off the austere
dignity supposed to pertain to his position, throw it off, put it on,
throw it off, and never for a moment impair discipline or lose in any
degree the respect and confidence of the men he commanded. . . .
Walter Unger, who for many years sat at the first violoncello stand,
and was a ’cellest of great distinction, used to be fond of telling this
instance of Thomas’s acuteness of hearing:
Unger had broken his violoncello and must have it repaired. The
workman changed the position of the sound post. Next rehearsal,
Unger had a short obbligato to play. When the rehearsal was over,
Thomas said to him: “Is that a new instrument you have there, Mr.
Unger?”
He had detected the slight change in its tone.
Everything to the Thomas mind must be exactly thus and so, and
above all, the audience was not to be distracted with any interruption,
even the slightest, of the regular and smoothly working machine. . . .
He was then spending his summers at Felsengarten, returning to
Chicago early in September. He told me once that the next four weeks
after his return were to him the hardest of the year. They comprised
what he called his “fighting rehearsals.” Through the long summer
vacation the members of the orchestra were playing helter-skelter, in
summer gardens, theaters, for dances, under any chance leadership
or none at all. In that time they drifted so far away from the sym-
phony form thet four weeks of drill were required to get them back to
standard. This will seem wonderful only to those that have not
glimpsed the peculiarly and unreasonably sensitive elements in the
orchestral equation. Why, it is a fact that even from Saturday night
to Monday morning, while the season was in full swing, the men
568 Philanthropy and Cultural Advance [1405
would fall off, so that the Monday morning rehearsal was always the
hardésth eas
I once asked him to tell me the story of the American Opera Com-
pany. Hetoldit. He said:
“Good intentions, bad management, no money.”
His terminology was not only terse but satisfying. The question
has often been raised in late years what he would have thought of
modern music if it had appeared in his time. I think I can contribute
an indication of his probable attitude. In the years that I have now
in mind I had often to go to New York and so utilized the chance to
observe how and what the Eastern orchestras were doing. On one such
visit a famous organization brought out with press trumpetings a new
symphony by a budding German composer. . . . The composition
with which he had favored us just then was a forerunner and most
admirable specimen of what later developed into the cubist or ultra-
modern school. So nearly as I could make out, it depicted life in a
madhouse, a large, teeming madhouse, situated somewhere on the
East Side of New York, near the elevated railroad, and in a street
where there was much trucking on bad pavements. The first two
movements seemed devoted to hysteria, the third to an interesting
study of the pathology of acute mania, while the last, in which the ele-
vated railroad fell down while all the inmates of the asylum screamed
at once in different keys over a background of fish horns was one of
the most remarkable things I had ever heard.
A considerable part of the audience received this contraption with
ecstacy, a sure-enough sign of the antiquity of a well-known affecta-
tion. I understood in New York that a copy of the work had been sent
to Mr. Thomas with the expectation that he would give it a Chicago
premier, and his judgment on it was awaited with interest. When I
returned I mentioned to him casually that I had heard the composition
in New York and it had seemed to be viewed with favor. He said:
“Musical mud.” . . .
He had much to do with the furthering of orchestral music in Amer-
ica but nothing with the singular superstition that the conductor
produces all the music, causing it to flow at his will out of the small
end of his baton. I think he would have been much amazed if he could
have looked ahead and seen the extent to which the public he was
tutoring was to be ensnared with this childlike belief. Since it is the
No. 134] Theodore Thomas, Orchestral Conductor 569
fact that the conductor’s real work is done at rehearsals and not before
the public, and since he was so hard set against all affectations, he
never pretended anything to the contrary. With patient labor he
drilled his players to play each composition as he desired to have it
played. When the public performance came on he gave them the
time and with his left hand conveyed intelligencies to them, but he
never did a sand dance about the platform and his every movement
was not only graceful, as I have said, but usually restrained. . . .
Yet he had his own affluent means of communicating his purposes
to the men that played before him. So far as the audience could see,
he was doing little more than to beat the time with his right hand and
baton, a thing that always caused grumbling among the superficial,
if they had been used to directorial gymnastics. What the audience
could not see was his face and eyes, eloquent with feeling and com-
mand, and the all-controlling movements of his left hand. This he
held so that only the players could see it and to them it was never
inarticulate. When he desired increasing emphasis he beckoned with
it, palm toward himself; when he wished restraint he turned the palm
the other way and made a repressing gesture. In the crescendo pas-
sages it rose; in diminuendo it was lowered. In all this as in so many
other devices of his, the thought was to offer to the listener no dis-
tracting suggestions, but allow him to concentrate his mind on the
music and nothing else. .. .
He was an iron-willed autocrat while he was rehearsing and an easy-
going democrat about everything else. He believed in giving every-
body a chance, and otherwise than as artists all men looked about
alike to him. Once in Cincinnati there had been, after the last evening
Festival performance, one of the celebrations that the orchestra was
accustomed to hold on gala occasions. This lasted late. As usual,
Thomas led all the fun. It was daybreak when they emerged upon
the street. At that hour there were neither cabs nor street cars to be
found, and Thomas was a long distance from home. Someone com-
miserated him upon the dismal walk ahead of him.
“Walk!” says Thomas. “I’m not going to walk. See that milk
cart? That goes up my way. I’m going home on that.”
He summoned the astonished driver, hopped into the narrow seat,
put a cigar into his own mouth and another into the driver’s, and went
off, gently humming “The Evening Star.”
570 Philanthropy and Cultural Advance [1905
I have not known of another conductor that pursued so resolutely
the practice of affording his men a chance to appear as soloists. Since
soloists were necessary, why not pick them from our own ranks?
seemed to be his idea. At one time he had, if I remember rightly,
four in his first violin choir that had been thus distinguished. Solo
performances by ’cellists, harpists, viola players, clarinetists, flutists,
oboists, the organist, and even by bass violinists are scattered through
his programs. Some of the men had been with him for years and
looked upon him as a father. Dear old Mr. Beckel, for instance, so
many years his principal in the bass violin group. I suppose that if he
had become convinced that Theodore Thomas’s plans and the welfare
of music in America required his death, he would have asked for two
glasses of beer and then sent for the hemlock. .. .
One reason for his potent influence upon his men was the deep
respect they had for his musicianship, first, and then for his trans-
parent integrity. The world at large is easily fooled by pretentious
incompetence, but two bodies here below are not fooled at all. A ship
captain may fool his passengers, his owners, his underwriters, the
press, and the public; he cannot fool his crew. With them, either he
knows his business or he does not. It is so with the members of a
grand orchestra and their leader. Conductors have been known in
orchestral annals that lived and had honor and grew fat and died re-
nowned, whose men would crouch behind their stands that they might
not see the baton’s eccentric gyrations. Some there have been that
were the subject of their players’ everlasting mirth, and some whose
players ran habitually half a beat behind. No such filigrees adorn the
story of Theodore Thomas. Baton and men proceeded in faultless
harmony and at the end all sound of all instruments seemed cut off
as if with one huge knife, sharp and clean.
At one of the last rehearsals I attended everything went well, the
difficult points were smoothed out easily, the tonality seemed perfect.
About half-past eleven Thomas laid down his baton, made his little
bow, and said, “ Well done, children, well done! We can all go home
now. Thank you, children!” He turned on them his big, kindly,
genial smile. I had heard him say that before, and never thought
that day I should not hear him say it again.
From The American Orchestra and Theodore Thomas, by Charles Edward Russell
(copyright 1927, Doubleday, Page and Company), 263-285 passim.
No. 135] Beautifying the Nation 571
135. Beautifying the Nation (1906)
BY EDWARD BOK (1920)
Bok was a Dutch immigrant boy, who came to the United States at the age of
six and has become one of the outstanding self-made men of the country. Starting
as a stenographer, he went into journalistic work, and at length became associated
in the management of the Ladies’ Home Journal, which he helped to bring to great
popularity and success. Bok has written America, Give me a chancel; The Ameri-
canization of Edward Bok; Twice Thirty; The Young Man in Business.
gee Ib OK now turned to The Ladies Home Journal as his medium
for making the small-house architecture of America better.
He realized the limitation of space, but decided to do the best he
could under the circumstances. He believed he might serve thousands
of his readers if he could made it possible for them to secure, at mod-
erate cost, plans for well-designed houses by the leading domestic
architects in the country. He consulted a number of architects,
only to find them unalterably opposed to the idea. They disliked the
publicity of magazine presentation; prices differed too much in va-
rious parts of the country; and they did not care to risk the criti-
cism of their contemporaries. It was “cheapening” their profes-
sion!
Bok saw that he should have to blaze the way and demonstrate
the futility of these arguments. At last he persuaded one architect
to co-operate with him, and in 1895 began the publication of a series
of houses which could be built, approximately, for from one thousand
five hundred dollars to five thousand dollars. The idea attracted
attention at once, and the architect-author was swamped with letters
and inquiries regarding his plans.
This proved Bok’s instinct to be correct as to the public willingness
to accept such designs; upon this proof he succeeded in winning over
two additional architects to make plans. He offered his reader full
building specifications and plans to scale of the houses with estimates
from four builders in different parts of the United States for five
dollars a set. The plans and specifications were so complete in every
detail that any builder could build the house from them.
A storm of criticism now arose from architects and builders all
over the country, the architects claiming that Bok was taking “the
572 Philanthropy and Cultural Advance [1906
bread out of their mouths” by the sale of plans, and local builders
vigorously questioned the accuracy of the estimates. But Bok knew
he was right.
Slowly but surely he won the approval of the leading architects,
who saw that he was appealing to a class of house-builders who could
not afford to pay an architect’s fee, and that, with his wide circulation,
he might become an influence for better architecture through these
small houses. The sets of plans and specifications sold by the thou-
sands. It was not long before the magazine was able to present small-
house plans by the foremost architects of the country, whose services
the average householder could otherwise never have dreamed of
securing.
Bok not only saw an opportunity to better the exterior of the small
houses, but he determined that each plan published should provide
for two essentials: every servant’s room should have two windows to
insure cross-ventilation, and contain twice the number of cubic feet
usually given to such rooms; and in place of the American parlor,
which he considered a useless room, should be substituted either a
living-room or a library. He did not point to these improvements;
every plan simply presented the larger servant’s room and did not
present a parlor. It is a singular fact that of the tens of thousands
of plans sold, not a purchaser ever noticed the absence of a parlor
except one woman in Brookline, Mass., who, in erecting a group of
twenty-five “Journal houses,” discovered after she had built ten that
not one contained a parlor! .. .
For nearly twenty-five years Bok continued to publish pictures
of houses and plans. Entire colonies of “ Ladies’ Home Journal
houses” have sprung up, and building promoters have built com-
plete suburban developments with them. How many of these homes
have been erected it is, of course, impossible to say; the number
certainly runs into the thousands.
It was one of the most constructive and far-reaching pieces of work
that Bok did during his editorial career—a fact now recognized by all
architects. Shortly before Stanford White passed away, he wrote:
“I firmly believe that Edward Bok has more completely influenced
American domestic architecture for the better than any man in this
generation. When he began, I was short-sighted enough to dis-
courage him, and refused to codperate with him. If Bok came to me
No. 135] Beautifying the Nation R76
now, I would not only make plans for him, but I would waive any fee
for them in retribution for my early mistake.”
Bok then turned to the subject of the garden for the small house, and
the development of the grounds around the homes which he had been
instrumental in putting on the earth. He encountered no opposition
here. The publication of small gardens for small houses finally ran
into hundreds of pages, the magazine supplying planting plans and
full directions as to when and how to plant—this time without cost.
Next the editor decided to see what he could do for the better and
simpler furnishing of the small American home. Here was a field
almost limitless in possible improvement, but he wanted to approach
it in a new way....
Bok realized that he had found the method of presentation for his
interior-furnishing plan if he could secure photographs of the most
carefully furnished homes in America. He immediately employed
the best available expert, and within six months there came to him
an assorted collection of over a thousand photographs of well-furnished
rooms. The best were selected, and a series of photographic pages
called “Inside of roo Homes” was begun. . . .
The editor followed this up with another successful series, again
pictorial. He realized that to explain good taste in furnishing by
text was almost impossible. So he started a series of all-picture
pages called “Good Taste and Bad Taste.” He presented a chair
that was bad in lines and either useless or uncomfortable to sit in, and
explained where and why it was bad; and then put a good chair next
to it, and explained where and why it was good.
The lesson to the eye was simply and directly effective; the pictures
told their story as no printed word could have done, and furniture
manufacturers and dealers all over the country, feeling the pressure
from their customers, began to put on the market the tables, chairs,
divans, bedsteads, and dressing-tables which the magazine was por-
traying as examples of good taste. It was amazing that, within five
years, the physical appearance of domestic furniture in the stores
completely changed.
The next undertaking was a systematic plan for improving the
pictures on the walls of the American home. Bok was employing the
best artists of the day: Edwin A. Abbey, Howard Pyle, Charles Dana
Gibson, W. L. Taylor, Albert Lynch, Will H. Low, W. T. Smedley,
574 Philanthropy and Cultural Advance [1906
Irving R. Wiles, and others. As his magazine was rolled to go through
the mails, the pictures naturally suffered; Bok therefore decided to
print a special edition of each important picture that he published, an
edition on plate-paper, without text, and offered to his readers at ten
cents a copy. Within a year he had sold nearly one hundred thousand
copies, such pictures as W. L. Taylor’s “The Hanging of the Crane”
and ‘‘Home-Making Hearts” being particularly popular.
Pictures were difficult to advertise successfully; it was before the
full-color press had become practicable for rapid magazine work; and
even the large-page black-and-white reproductions which Bok could
give in his magazine did not, of course, show the beauty of the original
paintings, the majority of which were in full color. He accordingly
made arrangements with art publishers to print his pictures in their
original colors; then he determined to give the public an opportunity
to see what the pictures themselves looked like.
He asked his art editor to select the two hundred and fifty best
pictures and frame them. Then he engaged the art gallery of the
Philadelphia Art Club, and advertised an exhibition of the original
paintings. No admission was charged. The gallery was put into
gala attire, and the pictures were well hung. The exhibition, which
was continued for two weeks, was visited by over fifteen thousand
persons. k
But all this was simply to lead up to the realization of Bok’s cher-
ished dream: the reproduction, in enormous numbers, of the greatest
pictures in the world in their original colors. The plan, however,
was not for the moment feasible: the cost of the four-color process
was at that time prohibitive, and Bok had to abandon it. But he
never lost sight of it. He knew the hour would come when he could
carry it out, and he bided bis time.
It was not until years later that his opportunity came, when he
immediately made up his mind to seize it. The magazine had installed
a battery of four-color presses; the color-work in the periodical was
attracting universal attention, and after all stages of experimentation
had been passed, Bok decided to make his dream a reality. He sought
the co-operation of the owners of the greatest private art galleries in
the country: J. Pierpont Morgan, Henry C. Frick, Joseph E. Widener,
George W. Elkins, John G. Johnson, Charles P. Taft, Mrs. John L.
Gardner, Charles L. Freer, Mrs. Havemeyer, and the owners of the
O
No. 135] Beautifying the Nation Wie
Benjamin Altman Collection, and sought permission to reproduce
their greatest paintings.
Although each felt doubtful of the ability of any process adequately
to reproduce their masterpieces, the owners heartily co-operated with
Bok. But Bok’s co-editors discouraged his plan, since it would in-
volve endless labor, the exclusive services of a corps of photographers
and engravers, and the employment of the most careful pressmen
available in the United States. The editor realized that the obstacles
were numerous and that the expense would be enormous; but he felt
sure that the American public was ready for his idea. And early in
1912 he announced his series and began its publication.
The most wonderful Rembrandt, Velasquez, Turner, Hobbema,
Van Dyck, Raphael, Frans Hals, Romney, Gainsborough, Whistler,
Corot, Mauve, Vermeer, Fragonard, Botticelli, and Titian reproduc-
tions followed in such rapid succession as fairly to daze the magazine
readers. Four pictures were given in each number, and the faithful-
ness of the reproductions astonished even their owners. The success
of the series was beyond Bok’s own best hopes. He was printing and
selling one and three-quarter million copies of each issue of his mag-
azine; and before he was through he had presented to American
homes throughout the breadth of the country over seventy million
reproductions of forty separate masterpieces of art.
The dream of years had come true.
Bok had begun with the exterior of the small American house and
made an impression upon it; he had brought the love of flowers into
the hearts of thousands of small householders who had never thought
they could have an artistic garden within a small area; he had changed
the lines of furniture, and he had put better art on the walls of these
homes. He had conceived a full-rounded scheme, and he had carried
it out.
It was a peculiar satisfaction to Bok that Theodore Roosevelt once
summed up this piece of work in these words: “Bok is the only man I
ever heard of who changed, for the better, the architecture of an entire
nation, and he did it so quickly and yet so effectively that we didn’t
know it was begun before it was finished. That is a mighty big job
for one man to have done.”
Edward Bok, The Americanization of Edward Bok (New York, Charles Scribner,
1920), 240-250 passim.
576 Philanthropy and Cultural Advance [1919
136. The Problem of Spending (1919)
BY GLENN FRANK
For Glenn Franx, see No. 105 above.
HAVE just had one of the most exhilarating intellectual experiences
of my life. One of our distinguished rich men discussed with me
the dilemma he faces in attempting to decide how he should dispose
of his fortune in order to make it contribute to the largest possible
public good of this and future generations. The man in question is
a refreshing contrast to the type of gray-minded executive who has
amassed a fortune by that mysterious sixth sense—the money sense.
He is essentially an inventor, a social inventor. He has always been
animated by the pioneer’s restless itch for exploration of new and
undeveloped areas of business. His highly successful business has been
the product of a mind keenly sensitive to the social implications and
public responsibilities of business. He is, in the best sense of that much
abused and weather-beaten word, a liberal.
To his credit, let it be said that he has no one pet idea, social, polit-
ical, religious, or economic, that he desires to foist upon future gen-
erations by putting behind it an adequately financed and astutely
organized propaganda. He is concerned that future generations think
in a liberal fashion upon the problems they have to face at the time
rather than that future generations agree with ideas which he today
regards as liberal. In other words, he is more concerned that after
his death his fortune shall minister to liberal purposes, whatever they
may happen to be at the time, than to any liberal program now in
existence. He is more interested in the creed-maker than in the creed-
keeper.
All this is, I think, commendable. It marks a definite advance over
the plutocratic, paternalistic philosophy which animates a certain
type of rich man who at the moment of will-making thinks in the con-
ventional terms of endowments and foundations alone.
Iam not attempting to suggest a wholesale condemnation of founda-
tions and endowments. Most of us agree, I think, that the endowment
of scientific research, of the war against disease, and of education
are salutary forms of endowment. But even in these instances there
No. 136] The Problem of Spending 577
is a vast and relatively untouched opportunity for men and money,
saturated with scientific imagination, to stimulate the people to do
these things for themselves instead of having these things done for
them by endowments and foundations. The man who could use his
imagination, his leadership, and his money to influence the medical
profession and the masses of men and women throughout the country
toward the working out of a program that would make of the medical
profession a national health army instead of the physical rescue crew
of private practitioners it now is, and that would inject sanity into
our daily habits of living, would go further toward making us a physi-
cally fine people than any foundation studying this or that disease
can possibly do. We need foundations for the study of cancer and
hookworm and yellow fever and typhus. I am not attempting to
send even a breath of criticism in their direction. Iam only concerned
to suggest that throwing several million dollars at a group of scientists
and saying to them, “Study cancer,” is a relatively easy thing to do.
The world is waiting for the rich man who will undergo the intolerable
fatigue of thought in addition to the gracious gesture of benevolence,
and furnish the imaginative impulse that will awaken medical states-
manship in the medical profession, and convince the masses of our
citizens that they should be as fanatically propagandist about health
as about prohibition. .. .
As L. P. Jacks has suggested, it is one thing to know what to do
with several million dollars when one does not have them; it is a differ-
ent thing when they stand to one’s credit in the bank. The first is as
easy as talking; the second, as difficult as martyrdom. I should like,
however, to set down certain observations regarding rich men and
their money both during their lifetime, when their living will dictates
its use, and after their death, when their documentary will dictates
its use.
First, taken by and large, the rich man’s greatest opportunity for
public service lies inside his private business. That is to say, states-
manship in business is of greater social value than philanthropy out-
side of business. I have often thought of the case of Carnegie. Mr.
Carnegie, when he reached the zenith of his industrial and financial
power, sold out and spent the rest of his life in so-called “public work.”
He endowed libraries, built peace palaces, and enjoyed a wide-spread
reputation as a distinguished servant of the common good. I wish
578 Philanthropy and Cultural Advance [z01¢
Mr. Carnegie had possessed the requisite imagination and statesman-
ship to see that in his steel industry he possessed a remarkable social
laboratory in which he might have helped the nation to experiment
its way toward some solution of the vexed problem of industrial rela-
tions. I cannot but feel that had he spent his energy and his money
in this fashion there would now stand to his credit something far more
satisfying than the cobwebs that have been spun across the entrance
to his peace palace at The Hague. In other words, Mr. Carnegie had
the opportunity to be a statesman in business; he chose to be a phi-
lanthropist outside business.
Second, there is something fundamentally ineffective in the final
working out of virtually all endowed efforts. I believe that normal
human beings basically dislike having things done for them. It may
be that some day we shall discover that the only uplift that really
uplifts is the doing of some creative thing, the example of which will
be contagious, and doing it so successfully that it pays its own way.
Third, it is a dangerous thing for the American people to permit
rich, conservative, old men to endow for future generations their
own old and conservative ideas.
Fourth, the only thing any man of sincere and disinterested public
spirit has any right to project across future generations is the spirit,
the purpose, and the general direction of his mind. Even this right
must be hedged about by the proviso that the spirit, the purpose,
and the general direction of his mind be dynamic, liberal and headed
toward the future. .
Fifth, no one has yet devised a technic for endowing the endower’s
impulse in distinction from his ideas.
As I stated in an earlier paragraph, it is refreshing to find a rich
man who in the main is willing to subscribe to at least the first four
of these statements. I have said that my rich friend is animated with
the pioneer’s instinct, and possesses a creative mind. He may yet
render my fifth statement obsolete by devising a technic for endowing
that elusive thing, the liberal spirit. If he does, he will be the world’s
greatest benefactor.
I doubt that he will. I do not believe that it is possible to express
the liberal spirit generation after generation through any organization
or piece of machinery that any man can devise and endow. The
spirit of the inventor, of the pioneer, of the progressive is constantly
No. 137] The Architecture of Expediency 579
in conflict with established institutions. If the first group selected
by the rich man to administer his fortune for liberal purposes is to be
self-perpetuating, the obvious fact is that the members of this group
will select their successors at a time more conservative. This means
that the second generation of administrators will be more conserva-
tive than the first, and so on. .
How, then, is a rich man to provide for the continuous functioning
of his fortune after his death? The answer is, I think, that he cannot
and should not. There are of course all sorts of qualifications to this
dogmatic statement. I think it is possible and desirable for certain
fortunes to be left intact as endowments to scientific research and the
like. My statement applies only to the rich man who desires that his
fortune shall, generation after generation, promote political, social,
and industrial liberalism. I have my own notion of what I should do
if I were a multimillionaire facing the problem of making my will,
and wanted to be as certain as it is humanly possible to be that my
fortune would minister to liberal and progressive social policies. My
notion clusters around the endowment of living genius, and would
mean that my fortune would disappear as an entity or single fund at
the end of one generation. But that is another story for another time.
Glenn Frank, A Perplexed Millionaire, in An American Looks at His World
(Newark, University of Delaware Press, 1923), I-10 passim.
ee
137. The Architecture of Expediency (1924)
BY LEWIS MUMFORD
Mumford is an author, concerned largely with cultural and esthetic subjects.
He has been connected with a number of professional publications for architects,
which will satisfy seekers after more exact knowledge of what is being done in the
way of modern building.
HE provinces in which mechanical architecture has been gen-
uinely successful are those in which there have been no conven-
tional precedents, and in which the structure has achieved a sense of
absolute form by following sympathetically the limitations of mate-
rial and function. Just as the bridge summed up what was best in
580 Philanthropy and Cultural Advance [1924
early industrialism, so the modern subway station, the modern lunch
room, the modern factory, and its educational counterpart, the mod-
ern school, have often been cast in molds which make them conspicu-
ous esthetic achievements. In the Aristotelian sense, every purpose
contains an inherent form; and it is only natural that a factory or
lunch room or grain elevator, intelligently conceived, should become a
structure quite different in every aspect from the precedents that are
upheld in the schools.
It would be a piece of brash esthetic bigotry to deny the esthetic
values that derive from machinery: the clean surfaces, the hard lines,
the calibrated perfection that the machine has made possible carry
with them a beauty that is quite different from that of handicraft—
but often it is a beauty. Our new sensitiveness to the forms of useful
objects and purely utilitarian structures is an excellent sign; and it is
not surprising that this sensitiveness has arisen first among artists.
Many of our power-plants are majestic; many of our modern factories
are clean and lithe and smart, designed with unerring logic and skill.
Put alongside buildings in which the architect has glorified his own
idiosyncrasy or pandered to the ritual of conspicuous waste, our in-
dustrial plants at least have honesty and sincerity and an inner har-
mony of form and function. There is nothing peculiar to machine-
technology in these virtues, however, for the modern factory shares
them with the old New England mill, the modern grain elevator with
the Pennsylvania barn, the steamship with the clipper, and the air-
plane hangar with the castle.
The error with regard to these new forms of building is the attempt
to universalize the mere process or form, instead of attempting to
universalize the scientific spirit in which they have been conceived.
The design for a dwelling house which ignores everything but the
physical necessities of the occupants is the product of a limited con-
ception of science which stops short at physics and mechanics, and
neglects biology, psychology, and sociology. If it was bad esthetics
to design steel frames decorated with iron cornucopias and flowers,
it is equally bad esthetics to design homes as if babies were hatched
from incubators, and as if wheels, rather than love and hunger, made
the world go round. During the first movement of industrialism it was
the pathetic fallacy that crippled and warped the new achievements
of technology, which turns all living things it touches into metal.
No. 137] The Architecture of Expediency 581
In strict justice to our better sort of mechanical architecture, I
must point out that the error of the mechanolators is precisely the
opposite error to that of the academies. The weakness of conven-
tional architecture in the schools of the nineteenth century was the
fact that it applied only to a limited province: we knew what an ortho-
dox palace or post office would be like, and we had even seen their
guilty simulacra in tenement-houses and shopfronts; but no one had
ever dared to imagine what a Beaux Arts factory would be like; and
such approaches to it as the pottery works in Lambeth only made the
personality more dubious. The weakness of our conventional styles
of architecture was that they stopped short at a province called
building—which meant the province where the ordinary rules of
esthetic decency and politeness were completely abandoned, for lack
ofa precedent. ©...
So much of the detail of a building is established by factory stand-
ards and patterns that even the patron himself has precious little scope
for giving vent to his impulses in the design or execution of the work;
for every divergence from a standardized design represents an addi-
tional expense. In fact, the only opportunity for expressing his taste
and personality is in choosing the mode in which the house is to be
built: he must find his requirements in Italy, Colonial America,
France, Tudor England, or Spain—woe to him if he wants to find
them in twentieth-century America! Thus the machine process has
created a standardized conception of style: of itself it can no more
invent a new style than a mummy can beget children. If one wishes
a house of red brick it will be Georgian or Colonial; that is to say, the
trimming will be white, the woodwork will have classic moldings, and
the electric-light fixtures will be pseudo-candlesticks in silvered metal.
If one builds a stucco house, one is doomed by similar mechanical
canons to rather heavy furniture in the early Renaissance forms,
properly duplicated by the furniture makers of Grand Rapids—and so
on. The notion of an American stucco house is so foreign to the con-
ception of the machine mode that only the very poor, and the very
rich, can afford it. Need I add that Colonial or Italian, when it falls
from the mouth of the “realtor” has nothing to do with authentic
Colonial or Italian work?
Commercial concentration and the national market waste resources
by neglect, as in the case of the Appalachian forests they squandered
582 Philanthropy and Cultural Advance [ro24.
them by pillage. Standardized materials and patterns and plans and
elevations—here are the ingredients of the architecture of the machine
age: by escaping it we get our superficially vivacious suburbs; by
accepting it, those vast acres of nondescript monotony that, call them
West Philadelphia or Long Island City or what you will, are but the
anonymous districts of Coketown. The chief thing needful for the
full enjoyment of this architecture is a standardized people. Here
our various educational institutions, from the advertising columns
of the five-cent magazine to the higher centers of learning, from the
movie to the radio, have not perhaps altogether failed the architect.
The manufactured house is set in the midst of a manufactured
environment. The quality of this environment calls for satire rather
than description; and yet a mere catalog of its details, such as Mr.
Sinclair Lewis gave in Babbitt, is almost satire in itself. In this
environment the home tends more and more to take last place: Mr.
Henry Wright has in fact humorously suggested that at the present
increasing ratio of site-costs—roads, sewers, and so forth—to house-
costs, the house itself will disappear in favor of the first item by 1970.
The prophetic symbol of this event is the tendency of the motor-car
and the temple-garage to take precedence over the house. Already
these incubi have begun to occupy the last remaining patch of space
about the suburban house, where up to a generation ago there was a
bit of garden, a swing for the children, a sandpile, and perhaps a few
fruit trees.
The end of a civilization that considers buildings as mere machines
is that it considers human beings as mere machine-tenders: it there-
fore frustrates or diverts the more vital impulses which would lead to
the culture of the earth or the intelligent care of the young. Blindly
rebellious, men take revenge upon themselves for their own mistakes:
hence the modern mechanized house, with its luminous bathroom,
its elegant furnace, its dainty garbage-disposal system, has become
more and more a thing to get away from. The real excuse for the
omnipresent garage is that in a mechanized environment of subways
and house machines some avenue of escape must be left open. Dis-
tressing as a Sunday automobile ride may be on the crowded highways
that lead out of the great city, it is one degree better than remaining
in a neighborhood unsuited to permanent human habitation. So
intense is the demand for some saving grace, among all these frigid
No. 137] The Architecture of Expediency 583
commercial perfections, that handicraft is being patronized once
more, . . . and the more audacious sort of interior decorator is fast
restoring the sentimentalities in glass and wax flowers that marked
the Victorian Age. This is a pretty comment upon the grand achieve-
ments of modern industry and science; but it is better, perhaps, that
men should be foolish than that they should be completely dehuman-
ized.
The architecture of other civilizations has sometimes been the brutal
emblem of the warrior, like that of the Assyrians: it has remained for
the architecture of our own day in America to be fixed and stereotyped
and blank, like the mind of a Robot. The age of the machine has
produced an architecture fit only for lathes and dynamos to dwell in:
incomplete and partial in our applications of science, we have forgotten
that there is a science of humanity, as well as a science of material
things. Buildings which do not answer to this general description
are either aristocratic relics of the age of handicraft, enjoyed only by
the rich, or they are fugitive attempts to imitate cheaply the ways and
gestures of handicraft.
We have attempted to live off machinery, and the host has devoured
us. It is time that we ceased to play the parasite: time that we looked
about us, to see what means we have for once more becoming men.
The prospects of architecture are not divorced from the prospects of
the community. If man is created, as the legends say, in the image
of the gods, his buildings are done in the image of his own mind and
institutions.
Lewis Mumford, Sticks and Stones (New York, Boni and Liveright, 1924), 177-
x89 passim.
584 Philanthropy and Cultural Advance [1925
138. The New York Legal Aid Society (1925)
BY LEONARD MCGEE
The Legal Aid Societies in several large cities are organized to help secure justice
for persons who are too poor to incur the expense of the usual lawyer’s fees. In
large part their staffs are composed of law school students of exceptional standing,
whe are eager to take this means of gaining an early knowledge of the practical side
of the law.
HE Legal Aid Society of New York conducts its business along
the same lines as any private law office having a general prac-
tice of the law. We endeavor to assist in all branches of the law and
with several exceptions will represent our clients in litigated matters in
any of the courts of the state. It must be borne in mind that our first
aim is to give legal aid. . . . Secondly: This legal aid is given gratu-
itously, if necessary, which means that no person because of his
inability to pay our small retainer charge of twenty-five cents shall
be refused assistance. The Society is not strictly a charitable institu-
tion, for we do not feel that the getting or the securing of something
to which an individual is legally entitled is charity but justice... .
Thirdly: Our assistance is given to all who may appear worthy thereof.
Where it appears either from the admission of the client or from some
other reliable source that the client has been guilty of theft or dis-
honesty or further misconduct in immediate connection with the
transaction out of which his claim arises, or in relation to the de-
fendant, then the claim of such applicant may be refused. . . .
I know of no better opportunity to study human nature and to
get an insight into the mode of living and the conditions under which
our poor labor than to sit at a desk in any of our offices and listen to
the complaints of those who seek legal aid. There come the wage
earners who have been deprived of the only thing of value they possess,
their time and the work of their hands; abandoned or mistreated
wives who are desirous of procuring a divorce, a separation or an
annulment; unfortunate children whose small inheritances are tied
up in court with endless bands of red tape; childless parents who are
desirous of adopting some little boy or girl; victims of various swindling
schemes; improvident borrowers who have become involved with
usurious money lenders; the widow who has been left perhaps an in-
No. 138] The New York Legal Aid Society 585
dustrial policy of insurance but cannot realize on the same until
Letters of Administration have been granted; sea-faring men who have
gotten into the hands of the crimp, etc.
Our Society carried all the way from the Municipal Court to the
Court of Appeals in the state of New York a case involving the sum of
$24, in which the defendant was what is commonly known as a loan
shark. The decision of the Court of Appeals confirmed our conten-
tion, and while the original claim involved only $24, the final deci-
sion affected claims totalling over $100,000 held by the various loan
companies in New York City against the poor... .
Although our clients fall into certain classes, one must not forget
that each is a living, feeling individual. No matter how ignorant
or hardened, each feels the sting of injustice; each nurses a wrong which
to him seems the most cruel in the world; each is discouraged and
embittered by his helplessness to right the wrong. Among such as
these seeds of anarchy fall on fertile soil... .
. . . We still have the spectacle of the rich man with his staff of
well paid lawyers doing with impunity what a poor man would be put
in jail for doing. Laws do not execute themselves. The most benev-
olent legislation put upon our statute books is utterly useless unless
one has the means to set the wheels of justice in motion.
The less one has the more it hurts to have that little taken
away. ... It is those unfortunates who cherish rights they have
not the means to protect and enforce, we long to serve.
Suppose you had come to New York on an immigrant ship. Suppose
you had entered through Ellis Island where the gentlest treatment
is none too polite and had lost all of your personal effects through
some irresponsible baggage agent. Suppose you had been set adrift in
a strange city and had been obliged to find a home in the slums of
our city when only a dollar or so stood between you and starvation;
suppose you found work in some sweatshop where you toiled for a
week, only to be turned away without a cent for your time and labor
and the fruits of your labor had gone to the enrichment of some parasite
of the community whose whole life is aimed at reaping where he has not
sown. What then would you think of New York? What feeling would
you entertain for one who is able to compel the proprietor of that
sweatshop to pay you what was justly your due?
But viewed even in that light, you cannot have a sympathetic
586 Philanthropy and Cultural Advance [1925
understanding of our work until you become familiar with particular
cases and acquainted with individual clients.
À woman hobbled into the offices one day, all bent and broken with
rheumatism. She told of the struggle she and her husband had had
to keep their little family together and a roof over their heads. But
they had found a way and with it a little happiness, until the husband
unexpectedly inherited $10,000 from relatives in Germany. Then his
crippled wife and his old friends were not good enough for him. He
took nine of the ten thousand dollars and disappeared. Not, however,
without some thought for his family, as he deposited $1000 in a savings
bank and left the bankbook where his wife would find it after his
departure. But he had not reckoned with certain legal difficulties
The money was deposited in his name and could not be drawn by the
wife and with that $1000 dangling there in plain sight, the wife and
children were being fed out of the poor basket.
. . . We obtained a decree of legal separation for the woman with
an allowance for support. The Court appointed a receiver of the
husband’s property who was authorized to draw the $1000 from the
bank and use it for the needs of the family. While that lasts the
woman and the children are provided for. .
For several years past, numerous complaints have been filed in the
various offices of The Legal Aid Society against certain furniture
concerns, concerns conducting their business, or part of it, on what
might be termed the “‘club-plan.” This “club-plan” was a scheme
whereby certain agents of the companies induced the purchaser to
sign a contract agreeing to pay twenty-five cents a week until he had
paid the sum of $17.50, at which time he was to be entitled to select
certain articles supposed to be of the value of $17.50. These contracts
contained a peculiar feature to the effect that each week a drawing
was had, and the one who held what might be termed a lucky number
was entitled to receive an article worth $17.50, without the making
of any further payments. This drawing feature was a means of adver-
tising, but it was also a lottery, and lotteries are prohibited under our
existing laws.
The contract-holders who applied to us for assistance complained,
and justly so, because the articles selected by them, and the articles
delivered, were hardly ever the same. Another bad feature of the
business was that of offering to a contract-holder, after the full pur-
No. 138] The New York Legal Aid Society 587
chase price had been paid, an article of such inferior value that the
customer in many cases refused to accept it, and upon the earnest
solicitation of one of the salesmen, was induced to pay several dollars
more for an article of excellent value. There were seven or eight of
these concerns in New York City.
Thanks to the activity on the part of the District Attorney’s office
in New York County, warrants were issued for the arrest of all the
proprietors upon the charge of running a lottery. The defendants
waived examination in the Magistrate’s Court, and their cases came
on to be heard in Sessions, and just prior to their arraignment in Ses-
sions a request was made by the various proprietors and by the Dis-
trict Attorney’s office that The Legal Aid Society suggest ways and
means whereby the holders of these “club-plan” contracts would
receive something on their contracts. . . . I prepared and submitted
a plan of adjustment which proved acceptable to the defendants, the
District Attorney’s office, and the Court, so that when the cases came
on for trial, the defendanis all pleaded guilty, sentence being suspended
that an opportunity be given to the defendants to make restitution
in accordance with the terms of my plan... .
Little can one appreciate the difficulties encountered in dealing with
a proposition of this size. Our sole idea in this undertaking was to
see that the poor received something for their money, receiving that
something at a time when it would be most needed, instead of running
the chance of having the business of these concerns tied up for indefi-
nite periods, and, in the end, the possibility of receiving nothing.
While I feel perfectly sure that all of the customers whose claims were
adjusted were not wholly satisfied with the adjustment, I have the
consolation of knowing that they received something for what they
paid in, whereas if no such plan as I devised had been accepted, their
chances of recovering anything would have been lost.
Leonard McGee, in Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social
Science (Philadelphia, March, 1926), CXXIV, 28-32 passim.
CHAPTER XXVI — EDUCATION
139. Public School Ideals (1916)
BY SUPERINTENDENT WILLIAM WIRT
Wirt is Superintendent of Schools at Gary, Indiana; he is the author of the famous
Gary System of practical education, and has been the initiator of several other
highly successful and widely imitated innovations in public-school teaching.
UBLIC-SCHOOL ideals have changed during the past ten years.
This change has been sudden and, in a sense, inspiring. Many
educational leaders, who as radical progressives were instrumental
in promoting the new view-point, are now considered conservatives
because they are not able at once to realize completely these new ideals
of the school. For a long time the doctrine has been preached that
the school should train the heart and the hand as well as the head,
that the school should develop industrial efficiency as well as scholar-
ship, that the school should teach the art of right living as well as
arithmetic, reading, and writing. But when the public has at last
been converted and demands that the whole child be sent to school,
and that the needs of all the children be met, the school is overwhelmed
with its responsibility. The traditional school organization and equip-
ment are found to be inadequate.
The first business of the school is to get the child into a condition
to be taught what the school has to teach: the child must have good
health, intelligence, reliability, and industry in order to succeed either
in the school or out of the school. He must have real life experiences
to supplement the book study, and must have a chance to use the
knowledge gained from books not only to master the knowledge but
also to understand why he should study the books. The traditional
school, with children strapped to fixed school seats for nine hundred
hours a year, and loafing in the streets three hours for one spent in
school, is not prepared to develop good health, intelligence, industry,
or reliability. The public and the teachers now see that the tremen-
588
No. 139] Public School Ideals 589
dous current of energy expended for the education of the city child
is being short-circuited through the wasted life of the city street.
The principal reason for the great change in the ideals of the school
to-day is that our city thought is now being dominated by men and
women who were themselves city boys and girls and understand their
needs and handicaps. They know that the average city home cannot
provide a sufficient quantity of wholesome activity at work and play
any more than it can provide adequate opportunities for study and
academic instruction.
It was the industrial training of children in the home and small
shop that made children of the past generation reliable, industrious,
physically strong, and contributed much to their general intelligence.
The school plus the home and the small shop educated the child. To-
day the small shop has been eliminated and the home has lost many
of its former opportunities. A much greater part of the education
of the child must be assumed by the school of the present generation.
It is true we have in the schools a little manual training and are now
talking about prevocational and vocational training. But the school
still considers the problem entirely from the standpoint of hew to do
a little of the industrial training with the least disturbance to the
traditional programme. What we really need is a complete reorgani-
zation of the entire elementary-school system to meet changed social
and industrial conditions. Patchwork will not do, and, besides, it is
expensive. The school must do what the school, home, and small
shop formerly did together.
I am in favor of an elementary-school system that really trains all
of its children, and educates the whole child, while it keeps him in
school until sixteen years of age. We desire a public institution that
will be a study, work, and play school. We want the school to con-
tinue to develop culture and scholarship. We believe that when the
wasted time of the street is used for wholesome work and play, sup-
plementing the study hours, the school will be more successful in
developing culture and scholarship and also able to fit boys and girls
for life.
Not only must the wasted street time of the child be eliminated,
but the time and energy of the teacher must be conserved. It is the
business of the administration of the school to develop and keep the
teacher in the best condition to teach, the child in the best condition
590 Education [1916
to learn, and both in the best possible environment for teaching and
learning. A successful work, study, and play school provides the best
environment for teaching and learning, and develops in the child the
right attitude of mind toward the school. It has been demonstrated
that such a school conserves the energy and time of the teacher.
When the children want to know what the school has to teach, the
teacher’s work is comparatively light. In fact, no teacher can by any
expenditure of energy educate the child. Each child must educate
himself. When children are busy educating themselves, and the
teacher is only a wise director of their efforts, the nervous drain of the
traditional school disappears.
Financing an ideal school is not a problem. Well-equipped work-
shops, supervised playgrounds, fine auditoriums, gymnasia, labora-
tories, and swimming-pools are not extravagant luxuries. These
additions to the school plant actually reduce the total cost of the
school to the taxpayers. Schools with abundant provision for work
and play activities as well as study are extravagant only in the oppor-
tunities offered the children. The great problem is to know what
kind of a school will meet the children’s needs and how to run such a
school when you have secured it. You can afford any kind of a school
desired if ordinary economic public-service principles are applied to
public-school management. The first principle in turning waste into
profit in school management is to use every facility all the time for all
the people. The modern city is largely the result of the application
of the principle of the common use of public facilities that we need for
personal use only part of the time. Ample accommodations may be
provided in all facilities in the schools, if they are in use constantly
by alternating groups. And this may be done at less cost than regular
classrooms provided on the basis of the exclusive private possession
of a desk and one-fortieth of a classroom by each pupil.
The public now understands clearly that the successful rearing of
children is as much of a social and economic problem as it is a peda-
gogical problem. No longer is the public going to permit the peda-
gogue to dictate school conditions regardless of social and economic
needs.
William Wirt, Introductory Note to The Gary Public Schools by Randolph S.
Bourne, in Scribner’s Magazine, September, 1916 (New York), 371-380.
No. 140] Employment of Disabled Service Men 591
140. Employment of Disabled Service Men (1918)
BY FREDERIC W. KEOUGH
Able specialists studied the problem of the rehabilitation of disabled sol-
diers with more interest and thoroughness during the World War than ever before.
Even with an elaborate scheme of reéducation, many veterans were not adequately
equipped to support themselves after their discharge. See also No. 155 below.
LLUSTRATED feature stories on the re-education of the wounded
soldiers and sailors usually describe mechanical and human mira-
cles. Such presentations of the subject cause us to think that there
is an enormous task ahead of us in making, by mechanical means,
whole men out of little more than remnants. To accept this as indic-
ative of the problem of re-education is to warp the judgment and
misdirect the general endeavor. At the outset, let it be understood
that the causes of military disability are, to the extent of at least fifty
per cent, of a medical nature. A disabled soldier or sailor is not nec-
essarily a man without legs or arms.
Ninety per cent of all returned wounded men go back to their old
jobs. With them the employment problem is simple. Only ten per
cent have to be re-educated. Undoubtedly many more men are in-
jured annually in American industries than we may expect in a year’s
war. Consequently the teaching of any trade or any kind of machine
operations to this seventy per cent gives them better incomes and
easier work than their former occupations. To the extent of over
ninety per cent re-education is nothing more than common, ordinary
industrial education—in established industrial schools, in day, con-
tinuation, and night classes, and in factories when the crippled man is
so nearly competent to do the proposed work that the employer can
properly put him to work, supervised by some one in the establish-
LONNIE Rk
Bringing the physically unfit and disabled man to an irreducible
minimum is a national obligation. In caring for disabled soldiers and
sailors, no source of possible benefit to their condition should be left
unexhausted. If disabilities make it inadvisable for a man to follow
his former employment, he should be fitted for a new occupation by
appropriate training.
592 Education [1918
But of what avail is all this if the injured man is not afforded op-
portunity adapted to his capabilities? The number and character of
industrial opportunities are the determining factor in the success
of any effort to rehabilitate disabled men. Unless manufacturers are
willing to employ restored and re-educated men; unless it is known
how many and what kind can be taken into indust.ial establishments,
the workers will stand idle in the market place.
The problem of the handicapped man is not a new one, for he has
been with us for a long time and our records of industrial accidents,
even for a year, ought to supply us with enough material for the prob-
lem of what to do with them. The matter of rehabilitation of the men
disabled in the present war will be a matter of national concern for at
least fifty years. It should be approached soberly, therefore, and with
none of the hysteria that attaches to the home-coming of the military
hero. It is one thing to welcome back a soldier in uniform and if he is
suffering from the effects of wounds to overload him with attentions.
When he lays aside the military garb and pursues the path of the
civilian, the honors and attentions that have been showered on him
are likely to cease.
The United States has resolved that every returned soldier shall
have a full opportunity to succeed. When necessary, war cripples
must be thoroughly trained in schools and industry, and industrial
opportunities must be disclosed for those who need occupation. Jobs
must be adapted to them, in order that they may become competitors
in every sense with the workers who are whole. Occupations that do
not exist must be brought into being. Certain work must be reserved
for cripples, and devices must be discovered and adapted that will
fit the victims of war back into all the ordinary activities of life. . . .
In the clerical field are undoubtedly the greatest number of openings.
Unlimited places are offered in the shipping, receiving and bookkeeping
departments of almost every factory. Stenography and typewriting
likewise hold possibilities, particularly for the blind. In France,
numerous blind soldiers have been trained to take dictation on a
special machine, and they transcribe their notes rapidly and accu-
rately. Clerical work, of course, requires that the injured man pos-
sess a certain grade of intelligence and general education, and when
either is lacking, the task of placing him in industry becomes more
difficult. Obviously we cannot turn all our injured soldiers into the
No. 140] Employment of Disabled Service Men 593
clerical field. The great majority will by natural inclination and train-
ing return to factory work.
Machinery building firms state that they have numerous opportu-
nities, and almost all the prominent automobile manufacturers make
similar expressions. One great automobile plant has stated that at
present it has in its employ 1,500 more or less disabled men, and out
of these, almost 300 are suffering from the loss of either hands or
legs; these crippled men, when placed in work that is properly adapted
to them are found just as efficient as the other workers, showing that
the crippled worker can hold his own with his fellowmen, if placed in
the right surroundings. This may almost be taken as a general rule
for all industries in which the crippled worker is to be utilized. . . .
It is the general opinion that on account of the heavy nature of the
iron and steel industry, few openings are possible for the crippled
worker; but a large steel corporation in Chester, Pa., announces that
it will be willing to take from eighteen to twenty disabled men, and
a New Jersey iron worker makes the same offer. A Detroit steel
casting company announces that in the core room a considerable
number of these workers could be employed, as all the materials are
brought to and taken away from the men. A large stove manufac-
turer in Milwaukee is confident that he can utilize at least 100 such
workers in his business.
The printing industry undoubtedly holds many opportunities, for
many of the smaller machines, particularly in the composing room,
can be operated while the worker is sitting. A man familiar with
linotype composition work, who might be blinded, may easily manage
the keyboard by the touch system.
In the list of industries holding opportunities for the men crippled
in their lower limbs, the positions named are almost entirely in the
regular processes of the work; but it must be remembered that in
almost every factory, no matter in what line, there are numerous odd
jobs requiring both intelligence and skill which are particularly suit-
able for disabled men. These include such positions as gatemen, car-
penters, watchmen, inspectors, shipping and receiving clerks, elevator
men, etc., and one factory announces that it is particularly ready to
co-operate in this work because its employment manager and safety
engineer are both cripples. Any factory preparing to give employ.
ment on a large scale to crippled men who would have to be taught
594 Education [1918
in the plant, could do no better than to have a crippled man as teacher
of the various processes, because his knowledge of the worker’s limi-
tations, as well as of the work to be taught, will give him a peculiar
sympathy and tact in dealing with a difficult subject.
In the foregoing, the opportunities have been noted principally
for men who have the use of both arms, yet many men suffering from
the loss of arms will have to be replaced in industry. At first sight the
task seems hopeless, but correspondence with various firms who either
employ or are willing to employ such cripples, shows that the places
are much more numerous than would at first be expected.
A manufacturer of band saw machinery in Michigan announces
that one of his employes who lost an arm some years ago earns as good
wages as if he had two. A silicate book slate company which employs
only eighteen men is willing to take three or four who lost either an
arm or a leg, while a furniture company offers to take twenty-five
similarly crippled. The lumber industry seems to offer numerous
possibilities in this line, and many firms, notable among them a Chi-
cago company, offered to take a number of workers who have one good
arm.
For men so disabled, the chemical industry is particularly inviting,
for the large number of processes which require little manual labor
but careful watching, make it possible to employ a man lacking both
arms, and one chemical firm in Maryland has offered to take fifteen
such men and train them to watch processes. An Ohio chemical firm
makes a similar offer, and I believe that these replies may be taken as
an index of the general condition of the industry. Another offer for
men with one arm gone comes from a wheel manufacturer, and is
followed by one from a maker of wire nails, who says that he could
use the crippled men to pack the nails in small boxes. . . .
It has been the experience of firms already employing disabled men
that they are so keenly appreciative of the opportunity offered, that
their spirit of willingness more than makes up for the disability.
Several of our correspondents who have cripples in their employ have
stated this. But it has been most aptly summed up by a New England
firm which says that the crippled workers in its employ are so satis-
factory, that the writer has often wished that he had more such men.
It is essential that it be impressed upon our disabled men that their
spirit and attitude toward their work are the biggest factors in their
No. 140] Employment of Disabled Service Men 595
success. Manufacturers on the whole are ready to give them every
opportunity, but the will to make good must be strong in the workers.
One firm summed it up by saying that there is always something
a cripple can do, even in the way of pure manual labor; but his value
to himself and to his employer depends very largely on his own
attitude towards the work... .
The need of employing every available worker will be with us not
only this year and next but for far in the future. Employers are glad
to take disabled soldiers and sailors into their establishments, and
give them training that will enable them to put out a first class product,
but they have to keep in mind at all times the necessity of production.
Therefore, they do not wish to give disabled men work that, in the
language of the day, will “hold them for a while.” Many of the
physically handicapped who cannot work at the bench and earn the
old rates of pay, can, however, apply their proficiency in receiving in-
structions and imparting them in the supervision of other workers.
In the consideration of the crippled soldier problem, it must be
kept in mind that there is little, if any, sentiment in business any more
than there is any patriotism in politics. Employers are not in business
for their health or for philanthropic motives; they are merely middle-
men who sell their products for their real worth, and neither the
employer nor the employe can get more out of anything than he puts
into it. The reward of the workman, therefore, is in accordance with
the proficiency and skill which he expends.
The fact that a man is a disabled soldier or sailor is not enough to
place him in any systematic manufacturing plant. He must be pro-
ductive. If he displays any aptitude for training he will be taken in,
instructed and paid while learning, and he will be shown that merely
average production is expected of him.
Many of the wounded men who return will require no special train-
ing, and these naturally will be the first to find their way back into
industry. They will be welcomed, for war is teaching us the necessity
of conserving and utilizing every ounce of our labor strength. The
returned soldier can always find work, for mature men are teachable,
and the returned soldier will be so thoroughly in earnest that the in-
structor will not only be surprised with the rapidity with which he
picks up the work, but the accuracy which he can command.
The disabled service man looks forward with joy and anticipation
596 Education [1921
to the day when he will get back to work. There need be no thought
of coercion in restoring such men to industry. The suggestion of the
surgeon of the early possibility of a wounded soldier taking up his
old-time vocation is always gladly accepted. .. .
Every American soldier on the firing line ought to be buoyed up
by the consciousness that if he suffers injury, his wounds will be healed,
his return home will be expedited, his special occupational ability
will be analyzed, his ambition stimulated and every effort will be made
to enable him to gain a position of economic independence. He can
feel in his heart that the hardships he undergoes are appreciated, and
know that a sincere effort is being made for him.
The men interested in the work of rehabilitating injured soldiers
are not restricting their imagination to the present. They are looking
forward to a period after the war, when hospital reconstruction and
trade re-education will continue, reducing the wastage of civil life
and adding to the new spirit of co-operation between capital and
labor.
Frederic W. Keough, in Annals of the American Academy of Politica and Social
Science (Philadelphia, November, 1918), LXXX, 84-94 passim.
141. Education Since the World War (1921)
BY PRESIDENT EMERITUS CHARLES W. ELIOT
For Eliot, see No. 106 above.
T remains to consider the improvements in American educa-
tion which have taken place, or are in near view, since the
United States went to war with Germany in April, 1917, that is, during
the four most pregnant years in American history. Congress and the
Administration united in a strenuous endeavor to create a huge
national army quickly by draft. The examinations which drafted
men were required to undergo revealed two facts about the mass of
the population included in the draft, which took the people of the
United States and its Government by surprise, and made them both
eager for remedies. The first was the amount of illiteracy. The
No. 141] Education Since the World War 597
second was the amount of venereal disease. Two prompt conclusions
were arrived at. First, that the education of the entire people could
not he left exclusively in the hands of the States and the municipalities,
but must be treated as a fundamental national interest. Secondly,
that the entire army and navy must be instructed, in their camps and
cantonments, in the means of avoiding and preventing venereal
diseases, in order that the army in France might be kept fit to fight.
Some guidance to this latter resolution had come earlier from the off-
cial reports from Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of War in President
Taft’s Cabinet, who had published the fact that the American regular
army of that day suffered more from venereal diseases than any
other army in the world; and from the action of Commanders of the
National Guard which made part of the force that in 1912 guarded
the Mexican boundary, these commanders having shown how to
protect their men from the portable villages of prostitutes which were
promptly established in the immediate vicinity of the camps, and
with which the officers of the regular army had no disposition to
interfere. The instruction administered to the army was of the crudest
sort; for it was given to the men through a dictation by young officers
from small hastily prepared manuals, which, however, were written
by competent persons. The camps and cantonments in this country
were energetically defended against both brothel and saloon, on the
ground that each fed victims to the other. These measures proved
remarkably effective; and the American people drew the conclusion
that it was not only desirable but feasible to prevent venereal diseases
in the mass of the population on a great scale. Hence a resolution
on their part that the needed instruction on this subject should be
given thereafter in all American schools, as part of a universal course
on biology and public health. The accomplishment of this purpose
is well under way, though by no means completed.
At the same time many non-governmental agencies set to work to
contend against the evil of illiteracy. The Young Men’s Christian
Association became active in the work of teaching recent immigrants
from alien races the English language and the elements of civics,
winning to their classes both young men and adults. Numerous
cosmopolitan clubs were organized in factory towns in the eastern
part of the country, which devoted themselves to similar kinds of
teaching. The chief emphasis was placed on the teaching of the
598 Education [1921
English language, and during the years which have elapsed since the
Armistice, much success has attended these efforts.
This success is a strong encouragement to the idea dawning among
thinking Americans that popular education should by no means be
confined to children under fourteen or under eighteen, or to young
people under twenty-four, but should be carried forward by evening
schools, Saturday classes, and vacation schools, after regular attend-
ance at school or college has ceased. Immediate results appear in
the raising of the age of compulsory attendance at school; in the
creation of the junior high school; of the evening classes in technical
institutes, for boys and young men who are already at work in trades:
and in the many offerings by universities of short courses in medicine,
business administration, teaching, and engineering specialties for
men who have already entered on the practice of their professions.
The national government, the states, and various institutions of higher
education are already offering numerous courses of this nature for
adults. Progress in this direction is greatly stimulated by the new
dangers that threaten democracy. The labor troubles, for example,
proceed from a lack of intelligence and reasoning power in large bodies
of voters, who may be consumers, employers, or employees. The
recent enactments about the tariff have similar sources in the ignorance
and lack of reasoning power among millions of our people. The only
way to overcome these evils which result from the general lack of
trained senses, practice in reasoning, and trustworthy information,
is to strengthen the education of both the young and the adult.
A small amount of schooling was enough for the voters of town
meetings in the New England of two hundred years ago, or one hun-
dred years ago. It is not enough for the voters of continental United
States to-day, who are called upon to act by their votes, or by the
votes of the representatives they select, on national and international
problems which are both strange and vast—too vast indeed for expe-
rienced statesmen as well as for the populace. Even in the compara-
tively simple field of military and naval operations, the Great War
produced no military or naval commander competent to deal with
the vast extensions of area and extraordinary novelties in modern
warfare. In the same way no religion, Confucian, Buddhist, Brah-
man, Mohammedan, or Christian, has developed during the past
seven years any new strong hold, either on its own people or the other
No. 141] Education Since the World War 599
peoples. At this moment al! the Christian churches, denominations,
or sects are wondering how they can recover their former hold op
their several bodies or groups. Every secular or religious organiza:
tion and every state or nation seems to need more intelligence, more
vision, and more sense of duty toward the high calls of honor and con-
science. There is but one road upward—more education, and wiser.
The national government has for many years maintained scientific
establishments for national uses, such as the United States Coast
Survey, the Naval Observatory, the Boards for maintaining a na-
tional quarantine, and the various bureaus in the Departments of
Agriculture, the Interior, and the Treasury, which deal with conserva-
tion, forestry, parks, and irrigation. The war added greatly to the
number of applied-science commissions in the government service,
such as the commissions on explosive engines, aéroplanes, and poison
gas. Some of these scientific activities have survived the Armistice,
particularly those which affect the education of the people and the
public health. Besides the national government, several states have
taken on new functions in support of popular education. For example,
Massachusetts has passed a carefully considered law which helps the
schools of rural communities practically at the expense of the urban.
Large appropriations have already been made by Congress, to be dis-
tributed by a national health board or commission among the states
which are prepared to codperate with the government in treating and
preventing diseases. Although national aid to universal physical
training is not yet consummated, it is plain that before long the na-
tional government will distribute such aid, and the states carry the
beneficent plan into execution. This great improvement, though
suggested by the experience of the nation at war, is really a great step
forward toward national health and happiness, and industrial eff-
ciency.
The national efficiency in time of war called for the service of
experts in great variety, chemists, physicists, biologists, psychologists,
and engineers; and the whole people acquired a new sense of the value
of experts, and of the institutions which train them. There have re-
sulted extensive improvements in those institutions. A curious case
of carrying over into peace times a war invention, is the use of the
psychological tests applied to the classification of recruits for the
army and navy in the classification of school children.
Goo Education [1921
Since 1914 financial and manufacturing corporations have mani-
fested an increasing desire for graduates of colleges or technical
schools as managers, superintendents, and employment agents. Many
of these corporations affirm that the kind of managers and superin-
tendents now needed cannot be brought up in the works, but must
have received an appropriate training in good secondary schools,
colleges, technical schools, or the graduate departments of universities.
Seeing these things, intelligent parents keep their children at school
as long as they can, instead of putting them to earn money for the
family as soon as the law allows, or before. Hence the extraordinary
resort to colleges and technical schools since the Armistice, and the
vigorous efforts to raise new endowments for these institutions, many
of which have been highly successful.
These achievements and tendencies loudly proclaim the secondary
schools and all the institutions of higher education have made great
gains since the twentieth century opened, and are going to make
many more as the twentieth century advances.
It remains to mention the remarkable educational enterprise on
which the democratic government of the United States has embarked
since it went to war with the autocratic government of Germany—
the Prohibition enterprise. Prohibitory legislation began in the
States, first in Maine, later in Kansas, and later still in some Southern
States. The national movement began with the war; and national
scope and purpose were necessary to its success. It rests solidly on a
Constitutional Amendment adopted by large majorities, and on Acts
of Congress which commended themselves to both political parties,
and secured strong majorities. It is a hopeful effort to teach the
entire people that alcoholic drinks never do any good, usually do harm,
often destroy family happiness, and as a rule impair productive
efficiency in the industries of the country. This teaching, to be effec-
tual, must ultimately be based on prolonged experience with zro
hibitive legislation. It involves continuous and universal instruc-
tion in the schools and homes of the rising generation—instruction
both scientitic and ethical. It also involves a considerable advance
in the ethics of the medical and legal professions, and in their sense of
responsibility to the community. No other national government,
democratic or autocratic, has ever attempted such a vast philan-
thropic and educational enterprise.
No. 142] The University of Today 601
All men and women who believe that education is the best safeguard
of democracy may rest content with the progress of education in the
United States since the Civil War.
Charles W. Eliot, Education Since the Civil War, in A Late Harvest (Boston,
Atlantic Monthly Press, 1924), 141-148. Copyright by Charles W. Kiliot; re-
printed by permission.
142. The University of Today (1921)
BY EDWIN E. SLOSSON
Slosson has been Professor of Chemistry at the University of Wyomiag, and
literary editor of The Independent; at present he is known as a popular writer on
scientific subjects.
HE era of splendid generosity that set in during the later eight-
ies transformed the older institutions and added such new ones
as Clark University of Worcester, Massachusetts, founded by Jonas
G. Clark; the University of Chicago, founded by John D. Rockefeller;
and Leland Stanford, Jr., University, founded by Senator Leland
Stanford of California. These three universities, opened between
1889 and 1892, were so well endowed by their founders that from the
start they took equal rank with institutions a century or more older.
As patrons cf the universities usually preferred to have their dona-
tions take the tangible form of buildings, there soon arose new class-
rooms, laboratories, chapels, libraries, and dormitories that quite
outshone the more primitive and utilitarian structures of earlier days.
Formerly buildings had been put up one by one at long intervals as the
needs of the institution and its funds permitted. The campus of an old
college thus became a sort oc architectural museum with specimens
of the changing fashions of & century. But when gifts of millions
came in at one time it was possible to plan harmonious groups. The
University of Chicago adopted for all its buildings the English colle-
giate Gothic in gray limestone and Stanford University an Hispanic
Romanesque style in red and yellow with mosaic inlays. Harvard
erected a unified group of five marble buildings for its medical school,
and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1016 removed to a
602 Education [t921
new site on the Cambridge bank of the Charles River, where a group
of buildings in classic style has been erected.
The imitation of Oxford and Cambridge models as shown in the new
buildings of Princeton, Chicago, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere is
indicative of a tendency to turn again to England for educational
ideals. Residential halls and common rooms were established in many
places in order to get something of the English college atmosphere,
and Princeton introduced a preceptorial system of personal instruction
in small groups suggested by the tutorial system of the older British
universities.
With increasing wealth and luxury on the part of the universities
came a desire for ceremonial display. Commencement ceremonies
which had been dropped into desuetude were revived and elaborated.
Academic costumes of the medieval style were introduced or invented.
The fashion spread like wildfire from East to West, and in a few years
mortar-board caps and gorgeous gowns were to be seen on almost
every campus in the country.
Coincident and connected with the rise of ceremonial was the de-
velopment of athletics. In the early days colleges were disposed to
frown upon student sports and in some cases, as at Princeton, tried
to prohibit them; but in the latter part of the nineteenth century
public games became recognized by the college authorities as the most
effective form of advertising and by the students as the quickest
road to fame. A gymnasium came to be considered as necessary as a
library, and more money was spent on a single football game or boat
race than would formerly have sufficed to run the college for a year.
In the modern American university the stadium has assumed an im-
portance and popularity such as it has not enjoyed since the fall of
Rome and Byzantium.
The dominant power in undergraduate social life of today is the
fraternity, a unique feature of the American college, though it corre-
sponds in a way to the corps of the German universities. We have
already noted the founding, at old William and Mary in the Year of
Independence, of the first Greek letter society, Phi Beta Kappa, as a
philosophical organization. In consequence of the anti-masonic
agitation of 1826 Phi Beta Kappa abandoned its ritualism and secrecy
and is now simply an honorary fraternity admitting about a tenth of
the seniors, men and women alike, on the ground of scholarship. But
No. 142] The University of Today 603
in 1826-27, even when the popular opposition to secret societies was
most fierce, three fraternities—Kappa Alpha, Sigma Phi, and Delta
Phi—were founded at Union College, and from this center the move-
ment spread rapidly though secretly to the New York and New Eng-
land colleges. Since then the fraternities have continued to thrive
and multiply, although at times college authorities, State Legisla-
tures, and “ Barbarian ” students have tried to suppress them. At the
present time there are over two hundred fraternities and sororities,
some academic and some professional, some local and some national,
certain of which have as many as seventy-five local chapters. These
societies which were once outlaws now receive practically official
status in the college organization and, instead of meeting in woods and
cellars, are allowed to have their handsome chapter-houses on the
campus. A few institutions like Princeton retain the old prohibition,
but at Princeton upper-class dining clubs have grown up which have
a strong resemblance to the Greek-letter fraternities. During the last
quarter of a century the membership of the national fraternities has
risen from 72,000 to about 270,000, of whom 30,000 are women.
They own or rent 1100 chapter-houses valued at $8,000,000.
The chief characteristics of the recent period of American education
are expansion and diversification. Higher education has burst through
the four walls and four years that formerly confined it and has over-
flowed the land. The number of students studying the classics in-
creases year by year, but the number studying new subjects increases
much more rapidly. The older colleges in the country are thriving
and doing better work than ever, but the city institutions have ex-
panded more rapidly.
The rigid requirements for entrance to college and the prescribed
course afterwards were broken down, and the elective system pro-
vided a place for new studies. The efforts of Jefferson to introduce
election into Virginia and of George Ticknor to do the same for Har-
vard had been, as we have seen, unsuccessful; but, when Charles
William Eliot, a chemist with radical ideas in education, became
President of Harvard in 1869, he was able in the course of the next
twenty-five years to provide for a completely elective system. The
example of Harvard was followed somewhat hesitatingly by almost all
the others.
Another university president of similar initiative, William Rainey
604 Education [1921
Harper, had the opportunity in the University of Chicago of creating
a new institution instead of reforming an old one and was thus able
to introduce many innovations that have been generally adopted.
One of these, the continuation of college work throughout the sum-
mer, enables the ambitious to complete a four years’ course in three
and gives teachers from other institutions an opportunity to carry on
graduate work. The University of Chicago imported the idea of exten-
sion courses from Oxford and also established correspondence courses.
Other agencies for making education accessible to the largest possible
number of students Harper derived from the Chautauqua Institution,
in which he had long been active. The Chautauqua movement started
in a camp-meeting of Sunday School teachers at Chautauqua Lake,
New York, in 1874. Similar assemblies were established in other
States and not only served to stimulate interest in systematic reading
but afforded a platform for the free discussion of public questions that
has had as great an mfluence over politics as the earlier lyceum move-
ment. From the platform of the Chautauqua assemblies held every
year it is possible to speak to five million people.
Tt is usual now for the city universities to give public lecture courses,
provide evening classes, and otherwise extend their privileges to those
not enrolled as regular students. Through the initiative of the late
Dr. Henry M. Leipziger, the City of New York has established a sys-
tem in the school buildings of free evening lectures which are attended
by a million adult auditors a year.
Besides stimulating and satisfying the educational demands of the
American people, the universities have extended their influence to
foreigners, both by drawing them to this country and by establishing
schools in other lands. As the home missionary movement started
most of the colleges west of the Alleghenies, so the foreign missionaries
carried the American college around the world. In China there are
eighteen colleges and universities established by American missiona-
ries. In Turkey the American schools accommodate five thousand
collegiate students. Such institutions as Robert College and the
American College for Girls at Constantinople and the Syrian Protestant
College at Beirut have trained the leaders of the new nationalities
emerging from the chaos of the Great War.
Edwin E. Slosson, Tke American Spirit in Education [Chronicles of America,
XXXIII] (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1921), 275-282.
No. 143] A Workaday College 605
143. A Workaday College (1925)
BY JOHN PALMER GAVIT
Gavit has been a newspaper reporter, editor, and manager. Antioch is the fore-
most college experimenting with the aim of combining practical experience and
academic training. Almost all of its students work half of each year, in practical
lines, as part of their education.
WO distinctive things about Antioch College attract most
attention. One is its half-and-half division of the students’
time between “book-learning”’ in the college itself, and a job—a job
in the ordinary sense of the word at regular current rate wages—out-
side, in the near-by city of Dayton or one of the other neighboring
communities; a few as far away as Cleveland or even Philadelphia.
The other is the fact that the full college course at Antioch takes six
years instead of the four usually required. Exceptionally able and
industrious students can finish in five; and there is a provision for a
few “full-time” students who do not take jobs and finish in four
years; but this is rather deprecated and penalized by a higher tuition
fee.
Antioch believes that that sort of education, even under its own
curriculum, is inadequate. It is the belief that after six years of the
combination of “cultural” study and “coöperative” work, as they
call it, the student will be substantially farther along in his life prog-
ress than he would be two years after graduation under the conven-
tional four-year system.
Each job is held ordinarily by two students, constituting a “ coöp-
erating” pair, who jointly and severally contract to hold it for a year,
including the summer vacation, which they divide between them-
selves. One works while the other studies in the college; the job is
thus continuous. A feature of the system is the conference about the
ins-and-outs of the job as the partners periodically exchange places.
While on the job the students live where, after the fashion and at the
expense they can afford, as other workaday folk do; though in Dayton,
where the majority of the jobs are located, Antioch clubs have been
established.
The jobs are found and assigned by the personnel department of
the college and there is no difficulty about finding them; employers are
606 Education [1925
glad to have these intelligent, serious-intentioned young people. And,
obviously, the system enables the college to take care of twice as many
students as it could if the whole student body were continuously at
college.
Now the primary purpose of this system is not “vocational” in any
narrow sense of the word. It is not that the student may learn a
trade, business, or profession; though in many cases doubtless it
contrives toward that result. Neither is it that the student may earn
his or her way through college; though unquestionably it does assist
materially in that regard. It is inherent and coherent in the vitals
of the Antioch theory of what constitutes education—real culture.
Antioch is not the only educational institution in which study and
outside occupation are combined. The University of Cincinnati, for
example, has long used that method, and it is a commonplace of college
life all over the country to have students in occupations of many
kinds earning their way. The big difference is this—it is a crucial
difference: that the University of Cincinnati, so far at least as this
feature is concerned, is primarily vocational, technological; and that
the self-support in the ordinary college is regarded as an outside and
more or less incongruous and interfering factor—a necessary, but
rather regrettable evil.
Modern education lays and will lay increasingly its stress upon
development through real activities; upon experience as superior for
educational purposes to instruction; upon living as a primary means
to learning; upon doing as equal and complementary to reading, talk-
ing, and listening. The direct aim of Antioch College is to send forth
roundly developed men and women with a running start in all the
ensemble of life; trained not exclusively by reading of books and hear-
ing the expounding of books, but also by first-hand experience with
living; developed by what they have done and learned for themselves
in the doing of it—in self-reliance, initiative, sound judgment, and the
actual practice of responsibility in activities valuable for their own
sake.
The outside jobs are of almost every conceivable kind, from farming
to stenography, from common labor in a foundry to translating
advertising matter from English to Chinese. Several students have
organized and operated business enterprises of their own—even a
fares ves
No. 143] A Workaday College 607
During a pilgrimage among a score or more of American colleges I
have heard almost ad nauseam about a sacred and awesome thing
called scholarship. I have found it very difficult to get a definition
of it. Of many attempts no two were alike. The only one that
seemed worth the breath that uttered it was this:
The possession of a practically adequate but ever growing body of gen-
eral information, with special and detailed knowledge in one’s particular
field; and no less the capacity for usefully applying that knowledge in the
relationships of real life.
It will do. Antioch seems to have that idea of “scholarship.” Its
course of study and activity embodies and presupposes both aspects
ONIRA
It is not easy to get into Antioch College; but the principal prereq-
uisites are not scholastic. Entrance examinations of the ordinary
sort cut very little figure. It is more or less assumed, to be sure, that
“failure to complete a high school course. . . raises doubt as to the
student’s fitness for college work, and definite evidence of such fitness
is necessary to remove that doubt,” but much more weight attaches
to what you are than to what you have studied.
Not, what have you studied? But what have you got out of what
you did study? And what kind of person are you? For “only young
men and women of high personal character, receptive intellect, and
power of application can hope to complete the course, and those who
are not impelled by serious and earnest motives are not encouraged to
apply for admission.”
So you have to submit convincing testimony about yourself, from
responsible persons who think they know you as regards a rather
searching list of personal qualities; you have to undergo a psycholog-
ical test and file a statement of physical condition leaving little to the
imagination or faith. But to top all that, you must write a letter
giving not only somewhat detailed biographical facts about yourself,
but as searching a self-analysis as you know how to make, and a
photograph (“preferably a ‘snapshot’ taken of you without a hat”).
Who are you, what do you think you are, and how did you get to be
that way? Why do you want to come to Antioch, and what makes
you suppose you can succeed here? What do you want to be and do in
the world, and why?
The examination of this material is searching, and wherever practi-
608 Education [1925
cable it is supplemented by an exhaustive personal conference. And
there is a dropping all along the way of those who, having got in, fail
to show affirmatively that they understand what Antioch is all about.
Flunking in examinations is the least of it.
Experience thus far shows that an average working student must
bring with him from home between $200 and $400; correspondingly
more if he is not to earn part of his expense. Last year the highest
actual expenditure—this was by a woman—was $873; the lowest,
$330. The average weekly earnings of the men were $17.50; of the
women, $15. The highest among the men was $36; among the women
$18; the lowest was $10.
Antioch students know what it costs them. They have to. Every
student in his freshman year must “get the habit” of keeping track
of income and expense. For one of the most interesting and valuable
features of this college is a required freshman course—three hours a
week for the first half year, in what you might call personal financial
hygiene. “F-1,” they call it—“ Personal Accounting and Finance.”
In this course every mother’s son and daughter of them is obliged
to make at the outset as a matter of required class work a personal
budget of expected expense and income, and to keep books, in a
standard form, and audited by the professor. The books must bal-
ance, too;—else no credit! To come out at the end with a deficit is
to flunk the course. And, by the way, while there is a column for
“miscellaneous” —if you put anything in that column you must pass
on to the next column and elucidate.
Another required freshman course which tends to start the student
off with an appreciation of what he is about, is that known as “ College
Aims,” leading him as it were to “budget” his purposes in life and to
focus his effort.
Is the “Antioch Plan” really functioning? It is—no doubt about
it. It has still far to go; some of its program is still to a certain extent
a plan rather than an accomplishment; some important things are
barely under way. But remember that the “New Antioch” has been
in existence only three years. The progress in that short time is
astonishing.
John Palmer Gavit, in The New York Evening Post.
CHAPTER XXVII — AMERICAN LITERATURE
144. Nature and John Burroughs (1900)
BY GEORGE GLADDEN
John Burroughs was a keen observer of wild life, a lover of animals, and a charm-
ing writer on nature subjects. Any of his books will convey intimate pictures of
life in the woods and fields. For a nature writer of another sort, see No. 162 below.
ES, sir,” said the small boy, promptly. Then he hesitated,
and gazed intently down the shaded road. The pause was so
long that it suggested a resumption of the interrupted reverie, but
the nodding head indicated a more definite mental activity; and when
the reply came, it was explicit. “It’s the fifth house on the other side
of the road.”
A curving driveway disappearing into a grove of maple, oak, and
spruce trees hinted at the whereabouts of the “fifth house on the
other side of the road.” Half-way down the drive there was suddenly
revealed to the pedestrian the figure of a man of rather less than me-
dium height, with a long, snowy-white beard, and hair in which
there was only a little of the earlier gray. He was standing at the edge
of the drive, motionless, and gazing upward into the foliage of a maple
tree within a few steps of the front porch of the “fifth house.” At
the sound of the pedestrian’s step he turned, acknowledged his iden-
tity, and added a quiet and courteous greeting. Then almost im-
mediately his gaze went back to the bough of the maple-tree, and he
said:
“T have been watching that wood thrush. I think she is trying to
turn her eggs; she seems to be moving about in the nest. I have
never happened to see a bird in the act of turning her eggs; it would
be interesting to observe how she manages it.”
A sympathetic reader of John Burroughs’s books could not have
asked a meeting with him more appropriate than this. It seemed to
express perfectly the genius of the man; the spirit of loving interest
609
610 American Literature [1900
in his subject which breathes from his every page, and this simply
because it is the very essence of his being. During the afternoon and
evening that followed, his talk was mainly of birds, and always in
that manner in which one speaks of friends who are loved and admired
and understood. These recollections of that afternoon and evening
will reflect, as faithfully as the writer may, some glimpses of the at-
mosphere in which “Locusts and Wild Honey,” and “Signs and
Seasons,” and “Wake Robin,” and all of the other pictures which
bear the name of the same artist, came into being.
“Riverby,” the “fifth house,” almost over the door of which the
wood thrush has built her nest, is in the beautiful little village of West
Park, on the west bank of the Hudson, and a few miles above Pough-
keepsie. Back of the house, and at the edge of the hillside that over-
looks the river, Mr. Burroughs has a little villa—a sort of embryonic
“Slabsides.” On the way thither through the orchard he showed
me a ruby-throated humming-bird’s nest, scarcely larger than a good-
sized English walnut. The little mother darted away as we ap-
proached, and sped nervously about the orchard, but her every move-
ment was promptly reported by my keen-eyed host. Such eyes could
keep half a dozen pens busy.
In the villa on the hillside Mr. Burroughs has done much of his
writing. There is a little summer-house a few steps away, and here
we lingered for a while, listening to the bubbling song of a house-wren
and gazing at the great shining stream and the gliding steam yachts
and the creeping sails. A remark about the view from his visitor led
Mr. Burroughs to say: “Yes, it is a beautiful sweep of water, but I
grow tired of it. It has got to be too cosmopolitan; there are too many
yachts and steamboats and other suggestions of wealth and com-
mercialism. Over at ‘‘Slabsides” I have a little river that I love. It
is a real river, with trees hanging over it, and birds in the trees, and
beautiful nature on every side—and no steamboats.”
By the lovely, winding wood-road, “Slabsides,” the picturesque
and interesting retreat of Mr. Burroughs, is about a mile from
“Riverby”; by the path over the wooded hillside it is rather less
distant. Up this path Mr. Burroughs led the way, at a pace that
gave plenty of exercise to a pair of lungs barely half as old as his.
“Iam a pretty good walker yet,” he remarked, “except in the city.
When I was last in New York, I walked from Fourteenth Street up
No. 144] Nature and John Burroughs 611
to the American Museum of Natural History (about three miles),
and I was quite tired when I got there. It was partly the unyielding
sidewalks that wearied me, I suppose; though the roar of the city
wears on my nerves. My ears are very sensitive, and the clatter and
crash of the street always affects me. Three or four days in the city
is about all I can stand at a time.”
“‘Slabsides” we found in possession of a large and very complacent-
looking cat, with fur, both in texture and marking, singularly like
that of a lynx. It was a curious animal for a bird-lover to have as
pet, and Mr. Burroughs expressed misgivings about “Sally” as she
greeted him with many little caressing ‘“pur-r-r-me-ows”’ and much
sidling about and rubbing against his legs. “Iam afraid she catches
birds sometimes, though I have never known her to,” he said. “This
morning she captured a chipmunk and brought him in here and
devoured him. I was very sorry about that, and I told her so, for the
chipmunk is an interesting little fellow, and quite harmless. About
an hour afterward she appeared with a full-grown red squirrel; and
I praised her for that, for you know what a murderous wretch the red
squirrel is in bird-land. If I could teach her to catch red squirrels
and let the birds and chipmunks alone, I would be glad to have her
about. She came to me as a waif, and I haven’t had the heart to turn
her away. I take care to see that she has all the milk she can drink,
but I am afraid, nevertheless, that she catches birds when she can.”
And a few minutes later Mistress Sally showed that she would if she
could, by trying, under our very eyes, to stalk a black-and-white
creeping warbler that had flown into the vine curtain which shades
the porch. The campaign was cut short, gently but firmly, and with
admonitions as to the sin of such designs; but for several minutes
Sally’s eyes continued to show felonious intent... .
Mr. Burroughs is not quite alone in his wilderness-framed garden,
so far as human neighbors are concerned. Mr. Ernest Ingersoll found
him out there a year or more ago, and immediately decided to make
for himself a workshop and retreat after the fashion of ‘“‘Slabsides.”’
So he built a lodge on the hillside just above the spring. And further
along on the same hillside a Poughkeepsie gentleman has perched a
commodious little villa with broad piazzas which command the superb
views up and down the valley of the Hudson. Under the eaves of
this villa, and within arm’s reach as one stands on the piazza, a phoebe
612 American Literature [1900
has built her nest, and was quietly hatching her eggs, undisturbed by
the proximity of her human neighbors.
“I saw her building her nest,” said Mr. Burroughs, “and noticed
that she did not seem to have any bump of locality. She would come
flying up here with her beak loaded with mud, and drop it on the beam
beside one of the rafters. But she seemed to forget each time where
she had deposited her load, and the result was that she soon had the
building of four or five houses on her hands. I thought that was rather
more than one small bird ought to undertake, so I interrupted the
building operations by putting stones or blocks of wood on the founda-
tions of all except one of the nests, and in that way concentrated the
attention of Phoebe upon a single site. This set her right, and she
went ahead and finished up one house—the one she is using now.”
It seemed to me that this story illustrated more than merely a bird
idiosyncrasy.
In a tree at the edge of the little plateau on which Mr. Ingersoll has
built his lodge, I was shown a turtle-dove sitting patiently upon her
roughly built nest, over the edges of which, on either side, appeared
the head and tail feathers of a young bird, evidently almost fully
fledged, and altogether too large for the mother to cover any longer.
And further down the hillside I was privileged to peep into a yellow-
billed cuckoo’s nest—a small handful of loosely laid sticks and twigs.
My report of the condition of this home caused Mr. Burroughs a good
deal of concern. Neither of the parents was in sight, and there was
only one egg in the nest. A day or two before, he said, there had been
a young bird and an egg there. “I fear that means another tragedy,”
he said; and those who have read the chapter on the “Tragedies of the
Nests,” in “Signs and Seasons,” will understand his meaning.
If these bits of news from “‘Slabsides” have served to suggest the
genius of the place, their purpose has been accomplished. It is hardly
an exaggeration to say that every form of life, animate or inanimate,
has some definite significance for Mr. Burroughs. That phoebe has
become a personality, an individual, to him, not alone because of her
rather pathetic absent-mindedness, but because she has let her friend
into the secrets of her home up there under the eaves. And it is so
with the turtle-dove of exaggerated maternal instinct; while the dis-
appearance of the infant cuckoo suggests a domestic calamity none the
less dire because its exact nature can only be conjectured. I do not
No. 145] Our Mark Twain 613
believe that Mr. Burroughs ever loses an opportunity to add to knowl-
edge of bird personality by observation of this kind; and his physical
vision, which is well-nigh infallible even now when he has passed the
threescore milestone, keeps him constantly supplied with such oppor-
tunities. If I mistake not, much of the charm of what he writes is
the result of the expression of this personal familiarity with the birds,
this tendency to write definitely and always sympathetically about
some one bird.
George Gladden, John Burroughs, in Outlook, October, 1900 (New York), LXVI,
351-355 passim.
145. Our Mark Twain (1914)
BY HILDEGARDE HAWTHORNE
Hildegarde Hawthorne, grand-daughter of Nathaniel Hawthorne, is the author
of a number of books, most of them for younger readers.—Bibliography: Mark
Twain, Autobiography.
AMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS was of pure southern
blood. His father, John Marshall Clemens, was a Virginian.
His mother, a Miss Lambdon, came from Kentucky, and Sam was
born November 30, 1835, in Florida, Missouri.
But there was nothing sectional about Twain. He belonged to the
whole of America, not only by sympathy and understanding, but
through actual experience. Half his young manhood was passed in
the wild west. When he was city editor for the “Territorial Enter-
prise,” of Virginia City, Nevada, he was kept busy writing up stage
robberies, shooting affairs, lucky strikes, raids, all the thrilling inci-
dents of life on the border. He had himself been a prospector, and
an unlucky one, missing millions more than once by a hair’s-breadth.
It was just as well for him and for the world, because if he had struck
it rich, then “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” and the other immortal
books would probably never have been written. .
It isn’t only that Mark Twain lived all over America. He lived
through all the different phases of the country’s growth. His family
was slave-holding. He went through the war of the Union, fighting
614 American Literature [1914
a little, getting captured twice, breaking parole the second time, and
escaping to the west. He had been a printer, a writer, a river pilot,
and a prospector. In California, he began to make his mark as a
humorist. While on the “Territorial Enterprise,” he had begun to sign
his articles and stories “ Mark Twain,” a pseudonym about which there
have been several stories. Clemens himself said that he took the
name from a Captain Isaiah Sellers, who wrote the river news for the
New Orleans “Picayune,” signing it Mark Twain, and who died in
1863. The origin of the name is well known, coming from the man at
the bow of the river steamer who heaves the lead—“By the mark,
three. By the mark, twain,” etc.
Next in line for young Sam Clemens was the fame accruing from
his story of “The Jumping Frog.” He had heard this story, or its
suggestion, told by Coon Drayton, an ex-Mississippi pilot, at Angel’s
Camp. Mark Twain loved this story, and later on he wrote it up.
He also told it, and Bret Harte used to say that no one knew how funny
the story was who hadn’t heard it told in that inimitable drawl by
Sam himself.
This story brought him world-wide fame. But as for money,
Clemens still had precious little of that. He kept at his journalistic
work, and in 1866 was sent to the Sandwich Islands, from which place
he sent in his great scoop of the Hornet disaster. You can read all
about it in Twain’s “My Début as a Literary Person,” and also how
“Harpers” accepted the story for the magazine, and how the delighted
author was going to give a banquet to celebrate the event. But he
had not written his signature clearly, and when the story appeared it
was under the name “ Mike Swain.”
After this, Twain began to lecture, making a great hit all along the
Pacific coast, and in December, 1866, he came to New York on the
first leg of his tour around the world, the tour that resulted in “The
Innocents Abroad,” though it did not go all round the proposed circle.
From that time, Clemens’ standing was assured. The profits of the
book were $70,000. After this the east was Clemens’ home. He mar-
ried Miss Olivia L. Langdon in 1870, and made his residence in Hart-
ford for many years. In 1875, he wrote the great book about Tom
Sawyer, which is largely autobiographical. Sam was a good deal like
the inimitable Huck Finn in his boyhood, “Do what we would, we
could not make him go to school,” his mother said. One day, when
No. 145] Our Mark Twain 615
his father, doubting whether the boy really was going to the school
for which he had set out, followed him, Sam got behind a huge tree-
stump on the way to the school, slowly circling it to keep out of sight
as his father walked on. This father was a stern, severe man, and
poor Sam had many an uncomfortable encounter with him.
Twain was sixty years old when he started to repay the debts of
his failure as a publisher. He made a tour round the world, lecturing
everywhere, besides writing several books, among them the splendid
“Pudd’nhead Wilson.” Every cent was paid off, and, before he died,
he had made a new fortune.
What a man he was! Beginning as a barefoot boy in a sleepy Mis-
sissippi river town, a journeyman printer with little education and
no promise of a future, a river pilot, an unlucky prospector, he became
a man of world-wide fame and immense influence. His books have
gone everywhere, have made generations laugh and weep. He was
not only a great humorist, he was a man of high courage and fine ideals,
a man who hated shams and lies, and struck at them fiercely. He
knew human nature, laughed at its queer contradictions, admired and
respected its goodness and kindness. Always he is intensely American,
without being provincial. Not only did he have a genius for writing.
He had a genius for being a man. If, as a young man, he was inclined
to be too extravagant, too irreverent, he conquered that tendency.
He grew in wisdom and in perception, and he loved people, loved men
and women and children. That is why we all love him. There is a
glow to him. You can warm your heart at his books, much as you
warm your hands at a fire... .
To the whole world of youth Mark Twain is Tom Sawyer, the Im-
mortal Boy, the greatest boy of fiction, the American boy, and yet
the essential boy that links all boys of whatever nationality together.
Tom and Huck—what more do you want?
What impressed you perhaps most about Mark Twain was that he
seemed to have met everybody. There wasn’t a type of human na-
ture he hadn’t personally known. And this was very near the truth,
for his years on the Mississippi and in the west, coupled with his long
life in the east and his knowledge of Europe and the Orient, had
brought him into contact with all sorts and kinds of “humans.”
Read, if you haven’t read, “ Tom Sawyer,” “Huck Finn,” and “Life
on the Mississippi.” And then sit down and be thankful that America
616 Aznerican Literature [r916
produced Mark Twain. You can hardly imagine one of them without
the other.
Hildegarde Hawthorne, Mark Twain and the Immortal Tom, in St. Nicholas,
December, 1914 (New York, Century Co.), XLII, 164-166 passim.
——_> ———_
146. Review of Book Reviews (1916)
BY EDMUND LESTER PEARSON
Pearson has been associated with the New York Public Library, and has been
an editor of The Outlook and the author of several books. For examples of book
reviews, see Sunday editions of the New York Times or Herald-Tribune, The Book-
man, and other periodicals devoting more or less space to literary subjects. And
see, as one type of literary criticism, No. 148 below.
... JET us discuss these two charges against American book-
reviewing. First, there is the commercialism, the control
of the literary page by the business manager; the muzzle placed upon
a free expression of honest opinion by the power of the dollar. There
can be little doubt that it exists. The testimony of men who ought
to know is so strong; the antecedent probability is so much in its
favor, that it cannot wholly be denied.
From personal experience I am unable to relate a single thrilling
encounter with Mammon. During five or six years I have inter-
mittently written reviews of various books for a newspaper which
devotes to reviewing probably more space than any other journal in
the country. It also carries a large amount of book-advertising. For
a much shorter time I wrote reviews for one of the periodicals.
Whether the editors were so impressed by my appearance of honesty
that they thought it hopeless to tempt me, or whether they are not
accustomed to try to tempt anyone, I will let you decide. But they
never conveyed to me, directly or indirectly, that I should praise this
book, or “go easy” on that book, because its publisher was a big
advertiser with them. Nor was one line, nor one word, of adverse
criticism, condemnation or ridicule ever deleted or altered in my re-
views by the editorial “‘blue-pencil,””—that mythical implement which
all editors are supposed to keep handy. Perhaps my experiences were
lucky: in fact, I know they were.
No. 146] Review of Book Reviews 617
But it would be wrong to argue from this instance that there is no
such thing as commercial influence on book-reviewing. In certain
places it undoubtedly exists,—the testimony of experienced and
widely-informed men is almost invariably in the affirmative. The
man who buys space in newspapers and magazines, whether to adver-
tise books, or patent medicines, or a department store, or a theatre,
or a railroad, hoids a weapon over the heads of the publishers. His
power can be used—it frequently is used—as a subtle and effective
kind of bribery, one of the new and refined forms of sin which our
civilization has developed.
So this evil which affects us, is only a small manifestation of a very
large national evil: the power which the advertiser holds to corrupt
the press, and through the press to mislead public opinion. It is bad;
it bothers us and troubles us to find that there are book-reviewing
publications which can be muzzled or bought. But as we are citizens
first, and librarians afterwards, it is absurd to lose the sense of pro-
portion. It is foolish to explode with wrath over this matter and not
to save any indignation for the larger damages which can be wrought.
It would be ridiculous to think merely of venal book-reviews and to
forget the children who are drugged and the wretched invalids, who
are humbugged because many publications do not dare to tell the
truth about patent medicines; or to forget the railroads and corpo-
rations which, by purchasing advertising space can and do buy edi-
torial opinion, color the news, and poison at its source the information
upon which we depend to govern our acts and votes.
Some of the persons who find fault with reviewing as it exists today,
seem to imply that the all-important thing is that bad books should
be blamed. They forget that it is equally important that good books
should be praised and their authors encouraged.
In our every-day speech we have almost lost the primary meaning
of the word “criticism.” We seldom think of it in its real sense,—a
“judgment.” Almost invariably we use it in its third or fourth mean-
ing: “harsh or unfavorable judgment.” .. .
Has it ever occurred to you to wonder what might happen to some
of the greatest classics of literature if they could suddenly appear to
us unattended by their reputations? Suppose that the mighty name
of Shakespeare was totally unknown, that the world had never seen
nor heard of his plays. Then suppose that somebody discovered the
o1& American Literature [1916
plays and published them. I think I can see, in my mind’s eye, some
of the comments they would provoke in certain cautious publications.
How the “‘sensationalism” of the last act of “Hamlet” would be de-
plored! Do you fancy that our Library Association’s Book-List
would approve ‘‘Othello’’?
In regard to the other comment of Mr. Perry, about American book-
reviewing—that it lacks candor, trained intelligence, and distinction—
that is true, but not novel. Many of the attacks upon book-reviewing
are unduly severe. Mr. Thompson, in the article in the Atlantic
Monthly which I have quoted, was inclined to be rather strict with the
book-reviewers, as well as with authors, who do not maintain the
dignity of literature and keep small personalities about themselves
out of print. A number of years ago, Professor Brander Matthews
wrote an essay called “Literary Criticism and Book-Reviewing.”
He speaks of those who make “. . . a three-fold assumption :—first,
that it is the chief duty of the critic to tear the mask from impostors
and to rid the earth of the incompetent; second, that the critics of
the past accepted this obligation and were successful in its accomplish-
ment; anu third, that there is to-day, at the beginning of the twentieth
century, a special need for this corrective criticism.”
Mr. Matthews denies the truth of all these assumptions. His
article is extremely sensible, and valuable to read in connection with
Bliss Perry’s indictments of book-reviewing. Although written some
years before Mr. Perry’s articles, it is in the nature of an answer to
them, stating, as it does, the other side. He wrote in reply toa British
author of a volume of “ Ephemera Critica,” and at the beginning makes
the distinction, which I have already quoted between book-reviews
and literary criticism:
“The aim of book-reviewing is to engage in discussion of our con-
temporaries, and this is why book-reviewing, which is a department
of journalism, must be carefully distinguished from criticism, which is
a department of literature. This is why also we need not worry our-
selves overmuch about the present condition of book-reviewing, since
it has not all the importance which the British author of “ Ephemera
Critica” has claimed for it and since it can really have very little
influence upon the future of the literature. As a fact, the condition
of book-reviewing is not now so lamentable as the British author has
declared, and it is not indeed really worse than it was in earlier years;
No. 147] The Modern Drama 619
but it might be very much worse than it is, and very much worse than it
ever was, without its having any unfortunate influence on the develop-
ment of a single man of genius. Indeed, genius never more surely
reveals itself as genius than in its ability to withstand the pressure of
contemporary fashion and go on doing its own work in its own way.”
In regard to the notion that there were so many great book-reviewers
in the golden past, Mr. Matthews relates this experience:
“In my leisurely youth, when I had all the time there was, I bought
a forty-year file of a London weekly of lofty pretensions and of a
certain antiquity, since it has now existed for more than threescore
years and ten; and in the course of a twelvemonth I turned every
page of those solid tomes, not reading every line, of course, but not
neglecting a single number. The book-reviewing was painfully un-
inspired, with little brilliancy in expression and with little insight in
appreciation; it was disfigured by a certain smug complacency which
I find to be still a characteristic of the paper whenever I chance now
to glance at its pages. But as I worked through this contemporary
record of the unrolling of British literature from 1830 to 1870, what
was most surprising was the fact that only infrequently indeed did
the book-reviewers bestow full praise on the successive publications
whick we now hold to be among the chief glories of the Victorian
reign, and that the books most lavishly eulogized were often those
that have now sunk into oblivion.”
Edmund Lester Pearson, in Bulletin of the New York Public Library, December,
r916. Reprinted by permission.
— cat ol
147. The Modern Drama (19109)
BY PERCY H. BOYNTON
Boynton is Professor of English at the University of Chicago. In his History of
American Literature, Chapter XXVII, he gives a much more extended account of
this subject. Many contemporary plays are now being published in book form,
and are helpful to persons who have no opportunity to see them performed.
ROM 1865 to 1900 the American drama occupied a place of so
little artistic importance in American life that the literary his-
torians have ignored it. . . -
620 American Literature [r919
With the last decade of the nineteenth century, however, a new
generation of playwrights began to win recognition—men who knew
literature in its relation to the other arts and who wrote plays out of
the fullness of their experience and the depth of their convictions,
hoping to reach the public with their plays but not concerned chiefly
with immediate “box-office” returns. The movement started in
England and on the Continent and—as we can now see—in America
as well, but the traditional American neglect of American literature
led the first alert critics on this side the Atlantic to lay all their em-
phasis on writers of other nationalities. . . . But by roro the drift
of things was suggested by the contents of Walter Pritchard Eaton’s
“At the New Theatre and Others.” In this book, of twenty-three
plays reviewed, ten were by American authors, and in the third sec-
tion, composed of essays related to the theater, two of the chief units
were discussions of Clyde Fitch and William Winter. And the dedica-
tion of Eaton’s book is perhaps the single item of greatest historical
significance, for it gives due credit to Professor George P. Baker of
Harvard as “Founder in that institution of a pioneer course for
the study of dramatic composition” and as “inspiring leader in the
movement for a better appreciation among educated men of the art
of the practical theater.” ...
“The movement for a better appreciation among educated men
of the art of the practical theater,” although led by one college pro-
fessor, was itself a symptom of fresh developments in the art to which
he addressed himself. Omitting—but not ignoring—the rise of the
modern school of European dramatists in the 1890’s, we must be
content for the moment to note that this decade brought into
view in America several men who were more than show-makers,
even though they were honestly employed in making plays that
the public would care to spend their money for. The significant
facts about these playwrights are that they gave over the imitation
and adaptation of French plays, returned to American dramatic
material, and achieved results that are readable as well as actable.
Their immediate forerunners were Steele MacKaye (1842-1894) and
James A. Herne (1840-1901)—the former devotedly active as a
teacher of budding players and as a student of stage technique,
the latter the quiet realist of “Shore Acres” and other less-known
plays of the simple American life. Coming into their first prom-
No. 147] The Modern Drama 62T
inence at this time were Augustus Thomas (1859) and Clyde Fitch
(1865-1909)... .
Clyde Fitch in twenty years wrote and produced on the stage thirty-
three plays and staged twenty-three more—an immense output. . . .
Fitch was never profound, never sought to be; but he was deservedly
popular, for he combined no little skill with an alert sense of human
values in everyday life, and he brought an artistic conscience to his
work. Because he was so successful his influence on other dramatists
has been far-reaching; and those who have been neither too small
nor too great to learn from him have learned no little on how to write
a play.
Mr. Augustus Thomas has lived in the atmosphere of the theater
from boyhood. He began writing plays at fourteen, was directing
an amateur company at seventeen, and had his first New York success
in his twenty-eighth year. Since 1887 he has been a professional play-
wright; he has nearly fifty productions to his credit, and he is now
art director of the Charles Frohman interests. . . .
In a short chapter it is impossible to discuss in detail any other of the
playwriters who have done with less applause but with no less devo-
tion the kind of writing represented by the best of Fitch and Thomas;
and it would be invidious to attempt a mere list of the others, as if a
mention of their names would be a sop to their pride. The case must
rest here with the statement that these two men were the leaders of
an increasing group and that the desire to compose more skillful and
more worthy plays was paralleled by a revival of respect for the modern
drama and the modern stage... .
Professor Baker at Harvard and Professor Matthews at Columbia
were looked at by some with wonder and by others with amused doubt
when they began as teachers to divide their attention between the
ancient and the modern stage. Yet as the study progressed their
students became not only intelligent theatergoers but constructive
contributors, as critics and creators, to the literature of the stage;
and then in the natural order of events the whole student body came
to realize that the older drama should be reduced to its proper place
and restored to it; that it was an interesting chapter in a literary and
social history because it was not a closed chapter, but a preliminary
to the events of the present... .
The first really great attempt to ask anything less of the modern
622 American Literature [1919
drama in America, to demand no more of the play than is demanded
of the opera or the symphony, was the founding of the celebrated and
short-lived New Theater in New York (1910-1911). That it failed
within two years is not half so important as that it was founded, that
others on smaller scales have since been founded and have failed,
that municipal theaters have sprung up here and there and are being
supported according to various plans, that scores upon scores of little
theaters, neighborhood playhouses, and people’s country theaters
have been founded, that producers like Winthrop Ames and Stuart
Walker are established in public favor, that the Drama League of
America is a genuine national organization, and that the printing of
plays for the reading public is many fold its proportions of twenty
years ago. The Napoleonic theatrical managers are still in the saddle
in America, and the commercial stage of the country is still managed
from Broadway, but the uncommercial stage is coming to be more
considerable every season. ‘The leaven of popular intelligence is at
works
Percy MacKaye (1875) embodies the meeting of the older tradi-
tions—his father was Steele MacKaye—and the most recent de-
velopment in American drama, the rise of pageantry and the civic
festival. As a professional dramatist he has been prolific to the extent
of some twenty-five plays, pageants and operas. His acted plays
have varied in range and subject from contemporary social satire to an
interesting succession of echoes from the literary past—plays like
“The Canterbury Pilgrims” (1903), “Jeanne D’Arc” (1906), and
“Sappho and Phaon” (1907), which he seems to have undertaken, in
contrast to Hovey, for their picturesque and poetic value alone. His
special contribution, however, has been to the movement for an un-
commercialized and national theater through the preparation of a
number of community celebrations. These include the Saint Gaudens
Pageant at Cornish, New Hampshire (1905), the Gloucester Pageant
(1903), “Sanctuary, a Bird Masque” (1913), “St. Louis, a Civic
Masque” (1914), and “Caliban, a Community Masque” (New York,
1916, and Boston, 1917). The fusing interest in a common artistic
undertaking has brought together whole cities in the finest kind of
democratic enthusiasm, and the effects have not been merely tempo-
rary, for in a community such as St. Louis the permanent benefits
are still evident in the community chorus and in the beautiful civic
No. 148] Two Eminent Novelists 623
theater which is the annual scene of memorable productions witnessed
by scores of thousands of spectators.
Percy H. Boynton, A History of American Literature (Boston, Ginn & Co., 1919),
437-447 passim.
ESEE ee
148. Two Eminent Novelists: Cabell and Hergesheimer
(1922)
BY CARL VAN DOREN
Van Doren has been associate in English at Columbia University since 1923; has
been literary editor of The Nation and Century magazines; is now an editor of the
Literary Guild; and author of many books. For material on contemporary authors
see such periodicals as The Bookman and The Saturday Review of Literature.
LTHOUGH most novelists with any historical or scholarly
L À hankerings are satisfied to invent here a scene and there a plot
and elsewhere an authority, James Branch Cabell has invented a
whole province for his imagination to dwell in. He calls it Poictesme
and sets it on the map of medieval Europe, but it has no more unity
of time and place than has the multitudinous land of The Faérie
Queene.
Nothing but remarkable erudition in the antiquities of Cockaigne
and Faery could possibly suffice for such adventures as Mr. Cabell’s,
and he has very remarkable erudition in all that concerns the regions
which delight him. And where no authorities exist he merrily invents
them, as in the case of his Nicolas of Caen, poet of Normandy, whose
tales Dizain des Reines are said to furnish the source for the ten stories
collected in Chivalry, and whose largely lost masterpiece Le Roman de
Lusignan serves as the basis for Domnei. One British critic and rival
of Mr. Cabell has lately fretted over the unblushing anachronisms and
confused geography of this parti-colored world. For less dull-witted
scholars these are the very cream of the Cabellian jest.
The cream but not the substance, for Mr. Cabell has a profound
creed of comedy rooted in that romance which is his regular habit.
Romance, indeed, first exercised his imagination, in the early years of
the century when in many minds he was associated with the decorative
Howard Pyle and allowed his pen to move at the languid gait then
624 American Literature [1922
characteristic of a dozen inferior romancers. Only gradually did his
gaiety strengthen into irony. Although that irony was the progenitor
of the comic spirit which now in his maturity dominates him, it has
never shaken off the romantic elements which originally nourished it.
Rather, romance and irony have grown up in his work side by side.
His Poictesme is no less beautiful for having come to be a country of
disillusion; nor has his increasing sense of the futility of desire robbed
him of his old sense that desire is a glory while it lasts.
The difference between Mr. Cabell and the popular romancers who
in all ages clutter the scene and for whom he has nothing but amused
contempt is that they are unconscious dupes of the demiurge whereas
he, aware of its ways and its devices, employs it almost as if it were
some hippogriff bridled by him in Elysian pastures and respectfully
entertained in a snug Virginian stable. His attitude toward romance
suggests a cheerful despair: he despairs of ever finding anything truer
than romance and so contents himself with Poictesme and its trib-
utaries. The favorite themes of romance being relatively few, he
has not troubled greatly to increase them; war and love in the main
he finds enough.
Besides these, however, he has already been deeply occupied with
one other theme—the plight of the poet in the world. . . .
Of all the fine places in the world where beautiful happenings come
together, Mr. Cabell argues, incomparably the richest is in the con-
sciousness of a poet who is also a scholar. There are to be found the
precious hoarded memories of some thousands of years: high deeds
and burning loves and eloquent words and surpassing tears and laugh-
ter. There, consequently, the romancer may well take his stand,
distilling bright new dreams out of ancient beauty. And if he adds
the heady tonic of an irony springing from a critical intelligence, so
much the better. When Mr. Cabell wishes to represent several
different epochs in The Certain Hour he chooses to tell ten stories of
poets—real or imagined—as the persons in whom, by reason of their
superior susceptibility, the color of their epochs may be most truth-
fully discovered; and when he wishes to decant his own wit and wisdom
most genuinely the vessel he normally employs is a poet. . . .
Joseph Hergesheimer employs his creative strategy over the pre-
carious terrain of the decorative arts, some of his work lying on each
side of the dim line which separates the most consummate artifice
No. 148] Two Eminent Novelists 625
of which the hands of talent are capable from the essential art which
springs naturally from the instincts of genius. On the side of artifice,
certainly, lie several of the shorter stories in Gold and Iron and The
Happy End, for which, he declares, his grocer is as responsible as any
one; and on the side of art, no less certainly, lie at least Java Head,
in which artifice, though apparent now and then, repeatedly surrenders
the field to an art which is admirably authentic, and Linda Condon,
nearly the most beautiful American novel since Hawthorne and Henry
James.
Standing thus in a middle ground between art and artifice Mr.
Hergesheimer stands also in a middle ground between the unrelieved
realism of the new school of American fiction and the genteel moralism
of the older. “I had been spared,” he says with regard to moralism,
“the dreary and impertinent duty of improving the world; the whole
discharge of my responsibility was contained in the imperative obli-
gation to see with relative truth, to put down the colors and scents
and emotions of existence.” And with regard to realism: “If I could
put on paper an apple tree rosy with blossom, someone else might
discuss the economy of the apples.”
Mr. Hergesheimer does not, of course, merely blunder into beauty;
his methods are far from being accidental; by deliberate aims and
principles he holds himself close to the regions of the decorative. He
likes the rococo and the Victorian, ornament without any obvious
utility, grace without any busy function. .. .
To borrow an antithesis remarked by a brilliant critic in the work
of Amy Lowell, Mr. Hergesheimer seems at times as much concerned
with the stuffs as with the stuff of life. His landscapes, his interiors,
his costumes he sets forth with a profusion of exquisite details which
gives his texture the semblance of brocade—always gorgeous but now
and then a little stifi with its splendors of silk and gold. An admitted
personal inclination to “the extremes of luxury” struggles in Mr.
Hergesheimer with an artistic passion for “words as disarmingly
simple as the leaves of spring—as simple and as lovely in pure color—
about the common experience of life and death ”?; and more than any-
thing else this conflict explains the presence in all but his finest work
of occasional heavy elements which weight it down and the presence
in his most popular narratives of a constant lift of beauty and lucidity
which will not let them sag into the average.
626 American Literature [1922
One comes tolerably close to the secret of Mr. Hergesheimer’s
career by perceiving that, with an admirable style of which he is both
conscious and—very properly—proud, he has looked luxuriously
through the world for subjects which his style will fit. Particularly
has he emancipated himself from bondage to nook and corner. The
small inland towns of The Lay Anthony, the blue Virginia valleys of
Mountain Blood, the evolving Pennsylvania iron districts of The Three
Black Pennys, the antique Massachusetts of Java Head, the fashion-
able hotels and houses of Linda Condon, the scattered exotic localities
of the short stories—in all these Mr. Hergesheimer is at home with the
cool insouciance of genius, at home as he could not be without an
erudition founded in the keenest observation and research.
Without question the particular triumph of these novels is the
women who appear in them. Decorative art in fiction has perhaps
never gone farther than with Taou Yuen, the marvelous Manchu
woman brought home from Shanghai to Salem as wife of a Yankee
skipper in Java Head. She may be taken as focus and symbol of Mr.
Hergesheimer’s luxurious inclinations.
Only at intervals does some glimpse or other come of the tender
flesh shut up in her magnificent garments or of the tender spirit
schooled by flawless, immemorial discipline to an absolute decorum.
That such glimpses come just preserves her from appearing a mere
figure of tapestry, a fine mechanical toy. The Salem which before
her arrival seems quaintly formal enough immediately thereafter seems
by contrast raw and new, and her beauty glitters like a precious gem
in some plain man’s house.
The Lay Anthony ends in accident, Mountain Blood in melodrama;
The Three Black Pennys, more successful than its predecessors, fades
out like the Penny line; Java Head turns sharply away from its central
theme, almost as if Hamlet should concern itself during a final scene
with Horatio’s personal perplexities. Now the conclusions of a
novelist are on the whole the test of his judgment and his honesty;
and it promises much for fiction that Mr. Hergesheimer has advanced
so steadily in this respect through his seven books.
Carl Van Doren, Contemporary American Novelists (New York, Macmillan,
1922), 104-130 passim.
No. 149] A Poet Questions Progress 627
149. A Poet Questions Progress (1923)
BY VACHEL LINDSAY
Vachel Lindsay (he says the name is pronounced “Vachel, like Rachel; not
Vachel, like satchel”) contends that poetry should be sung. The songs may be
improvised as one reads, but the author provides marginal suggestions by way of
help in the interpretation. Carl Sandburg is another modern American poet with
similar ideas. “The Sante Fé Trail” sounds the raucous horns of progress against
the quiet background of the prairies.
THE SANTA FE TRAIL
I. In Wuicyu A Racinc AUTO COMES FROM THE EAST
HIS is the order of the music of the morning:— To be sung delicately,
First, from the far East comes but a crooning. “° 4” *™2rvsed tune.
The crooning turns to a sunrise singing.
Hark to the calm-horn, balm-horn, psalm-horn.
Hark to the faint-horn, guaint-horn, saint-horn. .. .
Hark to the pace-horn, chase-horn, race-horn. To be sung or read
And the holy veil of the dawn has gone. seas ira tc
Swiftly the brazen car comes on.
It burns in the East as the sunrise burns.
I see great flashes where the far trail turns.
Its eyes are lamps like the eyes of dragons.
It drinks gasoline from big red flagons.
Butting through the delicate mists of the morning.
It comes like lightning, goes past roaring.
It will hail all the windmills, taunting, ringing,
Dodge the cyclones,
Count the milestones,
On through the ranges the prairie-dog tills— Le ae ore be
Scooting past the cattle on the thousand hills. . . . some AIE
Ho for the tear-horn, scare-horn, dare-horn,
Ho for the gay-horn, bark-horn, bay-horn.
Ho for Kansas, land that restores us
When houses choke us, and great books bore us!
628 American Literature [1923
Sunrise Kansas, harvesters’ Kansas,
A million men have found you before us.
A million men have found you before us.
II. In WuicH Many Autos Pass WESTWARD
I want live things in their pride to remain. In an even, deliberate,
I will not kill one grasshopper vain narrative manner.
Though he eats a hole in my shirt like a door.
I let him out, give him one chance more.
Perhaps, while he gnaws my hat in his whim,
Grasshopper lyrics occur to him.
Iam a tramp by the long trail’s border,
Given to squalor, rags and disorder.
I nap and amble and yawn and look,
Write fool-thoughts in my grubby book,
Recite to the children, explore at my ease,
Work when I work, beg when I please,
Give crank-drawings, that make folks stare
To the half-grown boys in the sunset glare,
And get mea place to sleep in the hay
At the end of a live-and-let-live day.
I find in the stubble of the new-cut weeds
A whisper and a feasting, all one needs:
The whisper of the strawberries, white and red
Here where the new-cut weeds lie dead.
But I would not walk all alone till I die
Without some life-drunk horns going by.
And up round this apple-earth they come
Blasting the whispers of the morning dumb:—
Cars ina plain realistic row.
And fair dreams fade
When the raw horns blow.
On each snapping pennant
A big black name:—
The careering city
No. 149] A Poet Questions Progress
Whence each car came.
They tour from Memphis, Atlanta, Savannah,
Tallahassee and Texarkana.
They tour from St. Louis, Columbus, Manistee,
They tour from Peoria, Davenport, Kankakee.
Cars from Concord, Niagara, Boston,
Cars from Topeka, Emporia, and Austin.
Cars from Chicago, Hannibal, Cairo.
Cars from Alton, Oswego, Toledo.
Cars from Buffalo, Kokomo, Delphi,
Cars from Lodi, Carmi, Loami.
Ho for Kansas, land that restores us
When houses choke us, and great books bore us!
While I watch the highroad
And look at the sky,
While I watch the clouds in amazing grandeur
Roll their legions without rain
Over the blistering Kansas plain—
While I sit by the milestone
And watch the sky,
The United States
Goes by.
Listen to the iron-horns, ripping, racking.
Listen to the quack-horns, slack and clacking.
Way down the road, trilling like a toad,
Here come the dice-horn, here comes the vice-horn,
Here comes the szar/-horn, brawl-horn, /ewd-horn,
Followed by the prude-horn, bleak and squeaking :—
(Some of them from Kansas, some of them from
Kansas.)
Here come the /od-horn, plod-horn, sod-horn,
Never-more-to-voam-horn, loam-horn, home-horn.
(Some of them from Kansas, some of them from
Kansas.)
Far away the Rachel-Jane
Not defeated by the horns
Sings amid a hedge of thorns:—
629
Like a train-caller in
a Union Depot.
To be given very
harshly, with a snap-
ping explosiveness.
To be read or sung,
well-nigh in a whis-
per.
630 American Literature
“Love and life,
Eternal youth—
Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet,
Dew and glory,
Love and truth,
Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet.”
WHILE SMOKE-BLACK FREIGHTS ON THE DOUBLE-
TRACKED RAILROAD,
DRIVEN AS THOUGH BY THE FOUL FIEND’S OX-GOAD,
SCREAMING TO THE WEST COAST, SCREAMING TO
THE EAST,
CARRY OFF A HARVEST, BRING BACK A FEAST,
AND HARVESTING MACHINERY AND HARNESS FOR
THE BEAST,
THE HAND-CARS WHIZ, AND RATTLE ON THE RAILS,
THE SUNLIGHT FLASHES ON THE TIN DINNER-PAILS.
And then, in an instant, ye modern men,
Behold the procession once again,
The United States goes by!
Listen to the iron horns, ripping, racking,
Listen to the wise-horn, desperate-to-advise-horn,
Listen to the fast-horn, kill-horn, blast-horn. . . .
Far away the Rachel-Jane
Not defeated by the horns
Sings amid a hedge of thorns:—
“Love and life,
Eternal youth,
Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet,
Dew and glory,
Love and truth.
Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet.”
The mufflers open on a score oï cars
With wonderful thunder,
CRACK, CRACK, CRACK,
CRACK-CRACK, CRACK-CRACK,
CRACK, CRACK, CRACK,
Listen to the gold-horn. . . .
Old-horn. .
[1923
Louder and louder,
faster and faster.
In a rolling bass,
with increasing de-
liberation.
With a snapping ex-
plosiveness.
To be sung or read
well-nigh in a whis-
per.
To be brawled in the
beginning with ~
snapping explosive-
ness, ending in a
langourous chant.
“No. 149] A Poet Questions Progress
Cold-horn. ...
And all of the tunes, till the night comes down
On hay-stack, and ant-hill, and wind-bitten town.
Then far in the west, as in the beginning,
Dim in the distance, sweet in retreating,
Hark to the faint-horn, quaint-horn, saint-horn,
Hark to the calm-horn, balm-horn, psalm-horn. . . .
They are hunting the goals that they understand :—
San-Francisco and the brown sea-sand.
My goal is the mystery the beggars win.
Iam caught in the web the night-winds spin.
The edge of the wheat-ridge speaks to me.
I talk with the leaves of the mulberry tree.
And now I hear, as I sit all alone
In the dusk, by another big Santa-Fé stone,
The souls of the tall corn gathering round
And the gay little souls of the grass in the ground.
Listen to the tale the cottonwood tells.
Listen to the windmills, singing o’er the wells.
Listen to the whistling flutes without price
f myriad prophets out of paradise.
Harken to the wonder
That the night-air carries. .
TASC as (Owe LC). eV DIS DETE
Of wo We. 1 Plailic sa, © lalties
Singing o’er the fairy plain:—
“ Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet.
Love and glory,
Stars and rain,
Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet... .”
631
To be sung to exactly
the same whispered
tune as the first five
lines.
This section begin-
ning sonorously, end-
ing in a languorous
whisper.
To the same whis-
pered tune as the
Rachel-Jane song—
but very slowly.
Vachel Lindsay, Collected Poems (New York, Macmillan, rev. ed., 1925), 152-
158.
622 American Literature [1926
Vv
150. Tabloid Journalism (1926)
BY RICHARD G. DE ROCHEMONT
De Rochemont is a Boston journalist. The tabloid newspapers, so named be-
cause of their condensation of size and content, have become a symbol of the low
intellectual standard of their readers, and a synonym for sensationalism. See also
No. 151.
HEN the New York Daily News sprang into being, in June,
1919, there was considerable speculation and no little scorn
in newspaper offices throughout the country. Many editors predicted
that the new paper, which was half the usual size and broke not a few
of the other conventions of American newspaper production, would
disappear in two months. Others saw alarming possibilities in the
very brazenness of the new creation, knowing its promoters to be hard-
boiled and successful publishers. After a time reports drifted in of the
paper’s gains in circulation and advertising, and converts began to
speak of the small-sized picture daily as the newspaper of the future.
Rumors that journals long established were soon to be reduced to
tabloid size passed freely. Every new publication would be tabloid,
it was said. The little papers could be sold at a low price, and yet
meet expenses with the money received from circulation alone. All
their revenue from advertising would be clear profit. The traditionally
imperturbable Fourth Estate began to get excited. Now seven years
have passed, and the subject is still full of interest to newspaper
workers. The first tabloid has succeeded, and in greater measure than
even its sponsors dreamed. Other tabloids have entered the field,
in cities much unlike New York. What has been their success? What
is their future?
At the beginning of this year fifteen daily tabloids were being
published in the United States, and many weekly and bi-weekly
papers in the smaller towns had adopted the tabloid form. The daily
tabloids all have the same size. Without exception, their width is
about twelve inches and their depth sixteen to eighteen inches. From
four to six columns, of about 200 agate lines in length, take the place
of the normal eight-column page.
They are of two distinct orders. There are those which attempt to
No. 150] Tabloid Journalism 633
present principally news, and a smaller number which feature pic-
tüiesii. in
The news tabloid originated in New York City in 1891, when two
attempts were made to operate a compact daily paper providing pre-
digested news for the hurried reader. Colonel John A. Cockerill,
early in that year, brought out the Morning Advertiser, with four pages
of four columns each, and proclaimed it to be “The Ideal Paper for
Busy People.” It was an immediate failure. On February z the late
Frank A. Munsey brought out the Star, which he had acquired a short
time before, in a new tabloid form under the name of the Daily
Continent. The Continent carried a considerable amount of advertising,
and received a great deal of favorable comment at the time, but,
like the Morning Advertiser, it was not a commercial success. Munsey
discontinued its publication on June 30 of the same year, and did not
experiment further with tabloid journalism.
The genealogy of the picture tabloid goes no farther back than
1903, when Lord Northcliffe began to experiment with little papers in
London. In America the archetypal tabloid is the New York News,
which at present has a clientele of over a million patrons. All the
other papers of the same class have been brought out in an attempt
to duplicate the success of its owners, Col. R. R. McCormick and J.
M. Patterson, of the Chicago Tribune, who first proved conclusively
that only a sharp lowering of the IQ [Intelligence Quotient] of a news-
paper was necessary to make it attractive to a hitherto unexploited
portion of the great metropolitan rank and file. These gentlemen,
operating the Tribune with unbounded energy and great success,
visited London after the war, and were greatly impressed by the
tabloids of that city, and notably by the London Mirror. So plans
were made to start a similar enterprise in New York. Two considera-
tions prompted the launching of the venture in New York rather than
in Chicago. In the first place, the Eastern city’s population is by far
the more cosmopolitan, and was therefore thought to be more sus-
ceptible to the benefits about to be offered it. In the second, it was
feared that in case the News should not prove successful, its failure
would reflect on the Tribune, if both papers were published in Chicago.
The original intention had been to make the News an evening paper,
since the old-time yellow journals had been most successful in the
afternoon field. But a careful survey of the situation showed a chang-
634 American Literature [1926
ing trend toward the morning papers, and the new paper was estab-
lished as one of them. In June, rọrọ, the first issue went on the
streets. Its popularity was immediate. It was backed by plenty of
money, but as the event proved, less than $250,000 was needed to
start it on its way, and it began to yield enormous profits after a little
more than a year. Bull-dog editions, dated as of the next day and
put on the street as soon as the afternoon papers’ sale slowed down,
helped to swell the circulation. . . . The close of 1923 saw the News,
after a little more than three years, with a daily sale of 633,578 copies,
with 569,381 on Sunday. During the following year these totals rose
to 786,398 and 807,279, respectively. The daily circulation for 1925
went over a million, while the Sunday edition reached 1,122,065.
In a recent issue of the weekly magazine published by the Chicago
Tribune organization, Mr. William H. Field, general manager of the
News, related in detail the history of the paper, with particular em-
phasis on the benefits Moronia has received at its hands. Two of
these boons are its red-hot pictures of great news events and its in-
spiring prize contests. In the matter of the news pictures Mr. Field
is somewhat romantic, for they were printed years ago by many very
conservative papers, including even the Boston Transcript. Rhap-
sodizing over the contests, he argues feelingly that “no one can deny
that they bring a bit of sunshine into otherwise dull lives.” As many
as two million replies have been received in a single contest, he
says.
The tabloids that have arisen in the wake of the News have all
shown steady, but much slower growth. They at once adopted the
principal features of the News, and have continued to copy them
almost exactly. The habitual tabloid reader knows just where to
find them, no matter what paper he happens to pick up. Diagrams,
with the arrow showing the way the slayer fled or the suicide fell;
strips of pictures, not too cleverly faked by the “art” department to
“tell the story”; dismal cartoons, making absolutely no sense except
to a constant reader, for they all tell continued stories; beauty,
fashion, household and health hints; the stimulating and philanthropic
prize contests; the Voice of the People, the Inquiring Photographer,
the advice to the moron smitten with the tender emotion, the sporting
department, the editorial page or half-page, and the daily instalment
of a novel dealing with the difficulties of a gay but moral stenographer
No. 150] Tabloid journalism 635
in eluding the lubricous embraces of her wealthy employer—all these
things are in every one of them.
The pictures, of course, are the very backbone of the tabloid.
Editors differ as to what gives a picture appeal, some declaring for
sex interest, some for news value, and others for a vague “human”
interest. In all truth it does not seem to matter greatly, so long as
there is some attack upon a simple emotion. The true tabloid reader
will gape at any picture, whether it means anything or not. The
front page, except for a headline in 96-point Gothic, is entirely given
up to pictures, as the two center pages also often are. The latter are
known as the double truck, and are usually turned over for editing to a
caption writer with an alleged knack of composing puns and nifties
agreeable to the lightweight reader. News, with the exception of a
few featured stories, is cut down to a point where it often becomes
unintelligible. The whole concoction is spiced with half-column
portraits of undistinguished and unbeautiful persons. But in the
News itself, the news matter is often very competently handled.
The other party in tabloid journalism, cleaving to the pure and the
dull, has not fared as well as its more sensational competitors. Its
papers have shown gains in advertising and circulation, but in no
instance more than might have been expected from any newspaper,
regardless of its format, which had contentedly steered a middle and
uneventful course. These more saintly tabloids employ many ancient
dodges to lure circulation, and as the cost of producing them is less
than that of a full-size paper, the majority of them have kept above
water. The exception is provided by the Vanderbilt chain. Its
collapse came in the early months of this year... .
The future of the tabloid press in America is a matter of dispute.
It has been predicted recently by Carr V. Van Anda, of the New York
Times, that in a few years all the daily newspapers will be forced to
adopt the tabloid form. Undoubtedly the increase in the cost of
newsprint and the convenience of the new size in production and dis-
tribution point to its further proliferation. But many advertisers
do not believe that it affords sufficient room on its pages for effective
display advertising, and say that they thus find its space more ex-
pensive than the results justify. Careless make-up and slipshod
printing have been deterrents to profitable advertising accounts in
many cases.
636 American Literature [1926
The news tabloids, as differentiated from the picture variety, have
done but indifferently well. Their gains have been slow, and the
public has shown no great enthusiasm for the benefits of the new size.
It is doubtful if it makes any great difference to the average reader
whether his paper is bulky or compact in his pocket, or whether it
obscures the view of his neighbor in the street-car more or less. The
curious dullness of these tabloids has reduced them to the dead level
of the greater part of the American press. Neither do they make any
appeal to the more ingenious newspaper mind. The story of the old-
timer who quit his reporter’s job on a tabloid “to go back to news-
paper work” is typical. No aspiring reporter cares to work on a paper
which allows no space for presenting a colorful, reasonably complete
story. When given a free choice, such men head for the full-size
papers. Thus the tabloids, in the main, are staffed by old hands in a
state of disillusionment, beginners who are glad to get any sort of
job, and a few smart boys and girls who have mastered the trick of
writing cheap slush. If these are to be the journalists of the future
little can be expected from the tabloids in the nature of sound news-
paper work.
Richard G. de Rochemont, The Tabloids, in American Mercury (New York,
1926), IX, 187-192 passim. Reprinted by permission of the author.
151. The News in Brief (1926)
BY “NERI” AND ‘WAMP”
A successful newspaper columnist—and “F. P. A.” is one—gets a large part of
his work done by admiring readers who contribute their own more brilliant literary
by-products. These two satires in verse exaggerate very little the nature and meth-
eds of sensational journalism. For a serious account of the tabloids, see No. 150
above.
A. A TABLOID REPORTER TO His City EDITOR
ORD of assignments, where to-day
Do I turn my steps in search of prey
For the presses, slumbering now,
Below?
No. 151]
The News in Brief 637
Do I go where guarded scabs peer down
On strikers in some Jersey town.
Or follow a murder, a suicide,
Walter Ward missing or Browning’s bride,
Rum boat captured, awash with booze,
Peggy Joyce wed?—but that’s not news.
Do I brave some patrician family’s hauteur,
Seeking a photo of its runaway daughter,
Or do my stuff on the seamy east side—
Some girl a mother, but nobody’s bride?
Love nest or baby farm,
Block ablaze, a four alarm,
Broker sued by lady’s maid,
City scandal or a dog parade?
Do I cover a wedding, a Communist fight
Or stay inside on dull rewrite?
Lord of assignments, blue is the day
And white are the sails, creeping down the bay;
Where do I go, O Gene,
Oh say?
“NERI”
B. Tue TABLOID City EDITOR to His REPORTER
Slave of assignments, on your way!
But keep in mind these facts to-day.
CHECK UP ON PICTURES. Get a report.
Cover the story but KEEP IT SHORT.
Slice it and Boil it. Keep it Down.
Get every angle that breaks in town.
Make it snappy and make a dead-line
(The presses begin at quarter to nine).
Here’s your assignment—that’s enough—
Do your stuff.
638
American Literature [1926
GET ME A PICTURE—don’t forget.
I’ve one photographer waiting yet.
Call me up if he can crash
In for a flashlight—then we’ll smash
It for the Pink—do all your tricks.
Get me a story and GET ME PIX.
Get the facts for a first-class staff,
Then write half.
Write me half, but all those facts
Got to get in or you get the ax.
Get me facts and PICTURES, too.
GET ME PICTURES, whatever you do.
Pix of dogs and of bathing girls,
Walter Ward’s home and Peaches’ curls,
That rum boat you spoke of, awash with booze,
Peg Joyce’s next one—although not news;
Blue-blooded heiress, children’s tricks,
GET ME PIX.
Slave of assignments—lucky wight—
I’m desk-tied here for half the night.
Out in the open, you should fret!
All in the world that you have to get
Is—no wonder your job attracts—
Pix and facts.
73 WAMP >
Anonymous contributions to The New York World, collected in Franklin P.
Adams, The Second Conning Tower Book (New York, Macy-Masius, 1927), 49-51.
CHAPTER XXVIII — SCIENCE AND INVENTION
152. Early Flying Experiments (1909)
BY OCTAVE CHANUTE
The Langley plane was subsequently removed from the Smithsonian Museum,
and demonstrated in successful flight, through the efforts of persons desirous of vin-
dicating Langley as designer of the first man-carrying, heavier-than-air machine.
In July, 1929, a plane remained in continuous flight for nearly three weeks.
S your president has said, on the 2oth of October, 1897,
I had the honor of presenting to you an account of some
gliding experiments that were carried on at Dune Park, near this
city. Those experiments were made solely to study the question of
equilibrium and to determine if it was reasonably safe to experiment.
We had the good fortune to make about 2,000 flights without any
accidents—not even a single sprained ankle. The only thing we had
to deplore was the fact that my son, in making one flight, tore his
trousers. An account of these experiments was published in the jour-
nal of this society for October, 1897, and subsequently an account
was also published in the Aéronautical Annual, Boston, in 1897.
That publication contained the statement that it was thought that
these experiments were promising, and I gave an invitation to other
experimenters to improve upon our practice. The invitation remained
unaccepted until March, 1900, when Wilbur Wright wrote to me,
making inquiries as to the construction of the machine, materials to
be used, the best place to experiment, etc. He said that he had notions
of his own that he wanted to try, and knew of no better way of spend-
ing his vacation. All that information was gladly furnished. Mr.
Wright wrote me an account, subsequently, of his experiments in
1900, which gave such encouraging results that each year thereafter
the brothers carried on further experiments in North Carolina and at
Dayton, Ohio.
On the 18th of September, 1901, Wilbur Wright read a paper before
639
640 Science and Invention [1909
this society, in which he gave an account of what he had done up to
that time.
Again, on the 24th of June, 1903, Mr. Wright read a second paper
before this society, giving an account of his progress since 1901. Late
in the year 1903 the Wrights applied a motor to their gliding machine,
which by that time they had under perfect control, and they made their
first flights on the 17th of December, 1903. . . .
Of the early flying experiments which had been made previous to
that time I will mention but two.
Mr. Maxim built an enormous apparatus, weighing 8,000 pounds
and spreading 4,000 feet of surface, moved by a steam engine of 360
horsepower. .. .
The next experiments were made in 1896 by Prof. S. P. Langley.
After devoting some years to experimenting, he devised a working
model which he started from a launching scow. The model machine
flew perfectly on the 6th of May, 1896, in the presence of Alexander
Graham Bell. This machine flew about three-quarters of a mile,
alighted safely in the Potomac River, and was ready to fly again.
On the 28th of November, with a similar model, Langley made
another successful flight, and further launches were privately made
subsequently.
He was then urged by the United States Government to build a
full-sized machine, capable of carrying a man, and he spent three or
more years in doing so. That man-carrying machine was completed
in 1903, and on the 7th of October of that year the launch was at-
tempted. The machine, however, caught a projecting pin of the
launching rail and was cast down into the Potomac. The operator,
Mr. Manly, was upset, carried down into the river, and came very
near drowning. Another effort was made December 8 and the same
mishap occurred. Part of the launching ways caught the machine,
and it never entered upon flight. There is no doubt, however, that
if the machine had been properly launched it would have flown. The
machine is still in existence. It was broken when alighting, and in
picking it up afterwards, but has been repaired. It ismost unfortunate
that further effort was not then made to launch that machine, and
that Langley was so severely criticized in Congress and by the news-
papers. He was grievously balked of deserved success, and he died
of apoplexy two years afterward.
No. 152] Early Flying Experiments 641
The next attempt to fly with a man-carrying machine was in North
Carolina on the 17th of December, 1903, when the Wright brothers
effected three successful flights, the first to alight safely in history.
The longest flight covered 852 feet and occupied 59 seconds, in the
face of a 20-mile wind. . . . In 1904 they operated in a field about 8
miles from Dayton, Ohio, and it took them most of that year to learn
how to turn a corner. The machine was slightly broken a number of
times, repaired, and finally, in October, 1905, they got their apparatus
under perfect control, and succeeded in making a flight of 24 miles in
38 minutes. They made 105 flights in 1904 and 49 flights in 1905.
. . . The machine is placed on a single rail, weights are hoisted on
a derrick, and a rope is carried from the derrick with a return pulley
to the machine. Upon the dropping of the weights the machine is
given an impulse, this method being found to be preferable to the
catapult which Mr. Langley had devised and which failed him on two
occasions when trying to launch his machine. . . . The launching
rail is 60 feet long, and with the aid of the falling weights the machine
quickly acquired the necessary velocity for rising in the air.
The years 1906 and 1907 were spent by the Wright brothers in an
effort to sell their machines to various Governments. They had taken
out patents in eight different countries, and they hoped to sell flying
machines to war departments, together with the secrets, the tables
of resistance, and all the elaborate calculations which they had made,
but in each and every case the Government wanted to be shown the
apparatus before buying. The Wrights refused to exhibit the machine
until such time as they had a contract contingent upon their perform-
ing certain feats—notably, to fly with two passengers and with enough
fuel to carry it 125 miles; that it must attain a speed of at least 36
miles an hour, maintained over a distance of 5 miles, and must fly
continuously for one hour.
None of the Governments would thus contract with them. They
were offered at one time $120,000 by the French Government, but
they refused. They were then offered $200,000 if they would per-
form their feats 1,000 feet in the air. To this they said that they had
no doubt that they could get up 1,000 feet but they had never done
so and would not agree to the proposition.
In 1908 they changed completely their plan of operation and de-
cided to show their machine with the risk of its being copied and
642 Science and Invention [1909
getting themselves into litigation. . . . There is at the front a double-
decked horizontal rudder. It will be noticed that these inventors
have modified the make-up of a bird by putting the tail in front. Be-
hind are placed vertical rudders, but it is the front rudder which ele-
vates and gives horizontal direction to the machine. The rear rudder
guides the machine to the right or left. Back of the main surfaces
are the two screws revolving in opposite directions.
The machine is equipped with a pair of skids for alighting, while
the French people have equipped their machines with wheels. The
wheels weigh more, catch more air, and are not as safe as the skids,
but the skids require a rail and a starting weight in order to get the
machine into the air, unless there is a brisk head wind... .
Mr. Wright had extraordinarily good fortune in carrying on the
experiments in France, his machine falling only once. One other
accident occurred in the breaking of one of the sprocket chains in
mid-air; but he then operated the machine as a glider and came
down safely. The French people at first made all sorts of comments,
criticisms, and caricatures of Wilbur Wright, and even published a
number of amusing songs, but finally he triumphed, won their esteem
and admiration, and they acknowledged that he was the master of
all the aviators. ...
Meanwhile we may go back to September, 1908, and note some of
Orville Wright’s performances. He had at Washington the same
general arrangement, consisting of a launching rail, launching derrick,
and an apparatus for hoisting up the weights, in order to give the ma-
chine impetus. This aéroplane is 40 feet across and has a breadth of
6% feet. The front rudder is 16 feet long, 24 feet broad, and is
equipped with skids. . . . The propeller is of peculiar and original
construction, and the motor is in every way the Wrights’, for, in 1902,
they made a canvass of the different makers of gasoline motors in
this country, asking them to furnish a motor according to specifica-
tions which they presented. None of them at that time could do so,
and the Wrights went to work themselves, designed a motor, and
built it with their own hands. This design has proven more reliable
than the motors built in France, which are unduly light. The Wright
motor, originally of 15 pounds to the horsepower, was reduced to 7 or
8 pounds to the horsepower, while the French people are building
motors weighing 4% to 5 pounds, but they do not prove as reliable,
No. 152] Early Flying Experiments 643
while the Wright motor has never given any trouble and has proven
reliable in every respect.
Orville Wright made a number of unofficial tests in 1908. On the
8th of September he rose to a height of 100 feet and flew 40 miles; on
the 12th he made a little higher ascension, estimated by the Army
officers at 200 feet, and flew 50 miles in ır hour and 15 minutes. Al-
together that year he made 14 flights. On the morning of the z7th of
September he made several short flights. In the afternoon of that
same day he met with a terrible accident; his propeller broke while
he and Lieut. Selfridge were in mid-air, the machine falling to the
earth, when Orville was seriously injured and Lieut. Selfridge was
killed. This ended the tests of that year. The Government granted
an extension of time and the trials were not resumed until July of this
year (1909). The results this year, as you know, have been very
successful. The official time test shows that on the 27th of July the
machine remained in the air for 1 hour and 13 minutes, with two per-
sons on board.
On the 30th of July the machine traveled 5 miles and back cross-
country in 14 minutes, with two persons on board, at a speed which
averaged over 42 miles an hour. Therefore, the machine was ac-
cepted by the Government and a premium was given the Wrights of
$5,000 for the extra 2 miles of speed. Wilbur Wright is now engaged
in teaching the Army officers how to use the machine. Immediately
after the acceptance of the machine, Orville Wright went to Berlin,
and there he has been accomplishing some remarkable feats. On the
29th of August last he made his first exhibition there, flying 15 min-
utes. On the 8th of September he went up with Capt. Hildebrandt;
on the 18th of September he went up with Capt. Englehardt, and on
the 27th of September he made a demonstration before the court.
On the 2d of October he took up into the air the Crown Prince, who
gave him a handsome present, and on the 4th of October he made a
flight of 21 miles, reaching a height estimated at 1,600 feet. This is
the latest performance which he has made, although there is no telling
what another day will bring forth. He is now in Paris. In London
he may make some demonstrations with his machine in the course of
a week or two.
Octave Chanute, Recent Progress in Aviation, in Annual Report of the Smithsonian
Institution, 1910 (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1911), 145-151 passim.
644 Science and Invention [1889-1912
153. Steinmetz: Immigrant, Scientist and Teacher
(1889-1912)
BY JOHN WINTHROP HAMMOND (1924)
Hammond, a student of electrical history, is publicity writer for the General
Electric Corporation. He wrote the first popular account of the experiments with
laboratory lightning. Steinmetz (1865-1923) exemplified the finest type of pure
scientist—a man devoted to the solving of difficult problems, charming in his avo-
cations, interesting to a great variety of friends. Though he might have accumu-
lated a large fortune, he never took more than enough money to satisfy his very
simple needs. In his later years he directed the great General Electric laboratory
at Schenectady, where his only obligation was to investigate whatever problems
challenged his insatiable scientific curiosity. A somewhat similar life story is
Michael Pupin’s From Immigrant to Inventor.
T was a Saturday afternoon when the vessel docked. The
cabin passengers were put ashore at once. But those in the
steerage, Steinmetz and Asmussen among them, were held on board
until Monday. Saturday and Sunday were warm, pleasant days; but
on Sunday night the wind changed, blowing damp and cold through
an open port upon Steinmetz’s head as he slept.
This sudden veering of the breeze, his first experience with the
fickle North American climate, complicated his landing experience
most uncomfortably, for he awoke with a very bad cold, which caused
one side of his face to become swollen, and made him feel miserable
generally.
Yet he hopefully confronted the immigration officers, accompanied
by his loyal friend. Together they landed at Old Castle Garden, now
the Aquarium, forerunner of Ellis Island.
If Steinmetz had been alone that day, his dream of coming to
America might have ended abruptly right there at Castle Garden.
His forlorn appearance, swollen face, empty purse, and stumbling
English caused the immigration authorities to shake their heads. His
knowledge of English was so scant that when the officials asked him
if he knew the language he could only reply, “A few.” After some
minutes of searching questions and puzzled answers the official de-
cision was reached and made known to him. He could not land! He
must go back to Europe!
The tremendous disappointment that leaped into his eyes when he
No. 153] Steinmetz: Immigrant, Scientist, Teacher 645
understood this decree did not alter the official attitude. With dis-
concerting briskness they sent him to the detention pen.
But his traveling companion saved the situation. Asmussen ex-
plained to the officers that Steinmetz and he were together. He
stoutly declared they would stick together after landing and that he
would personally see that Steinmetz did not become destitute in a
strange land. Asmussen spoke English fluently. Moreover he showed
a fairly substantial sum of money, which, he declared, belonged to
them both. He was willing to make himself responsible for the wel-
fare of his friend; and, upon his representations, Charles P. Steinmetz
was finally admitted to America, which was to be for him the land of
friends, fame, and fortune.
Yet, as already revealed, Steinmetz had not a penny in his pocket
when he first set foot upon American soil. His traveling companion
was his financier. He owed his friend money for paying his way over
from Europe; he owed him also for any expenses that came up from
day to day. He himself was destitute.
Thus it was that the two young friends found themselves in New
York with both funds and prospects uncertain. Yet those few weeks
were weeks of happiness for them. Asmussen had relatives in Brook-
lyn, and there they obtained lodgings until they could hunt up
works. m.
The next day Steinmetz went to Yonkers and called upon Rudolf
Eickemeyer, who conducted a prominent manufacturing establish-
ment near the railroad station, having succeeded the original firm of
Eickemeyer & Osterheld. What happened when he entered the office
is told by Walter S. Emerson, a nephew of Eickemeyer’s, who was at
that time an office clerk, in addition to other duties.
“He had come directly from the railroad station,” Mr. Emerson
telates. ‘‘He wore plain, rather rough clothes and a cap. I got the
idea, from looking at him, that he was some chap who had knocked
his way from place to place, looking for a job.
“T asked him whom he wanted to see. He replied: ‘Mr. Eicke-
meyer,’ speaking in a quick manner.
“I went up-stairs and found Mr. Eickemeyer. ‘Uncle,’ I said,
‘there’s a man to see you down in the office. I don’t know his name;
he might be a fellow who has come off a freight-train. I'll follow you
down.’
646 Science and Invention [1889-1912
“I went down behind Mr. Eickemeyer and stood in the door as the
two met. Then I heard the visitor’s name. I heard him say; ‘I’m
Mr. Steinmetz’ ; and then they began to talk German and sat down
together at Mr. Eickemeyer’s desk.
“T stayed a little while, then left. A little later I glanced into the
office. They were still talking together, Mr. Eickemeyer sitting at his
desk and Steinmetz in a chair alongside. They talked for a couple of
hours.” .
This interesting interview did not produce a position for Steinmetz,
however. All that Eickemeyer could do was to take the young man’s
name and address, promising to inform him if an opening occurred.
But Carl Steinmetz was not the sort of fellow to sit down and wait
for opportunity to seek him out. A week later he again presented him-
self at Eickemeyer’s plant, to see if there was a chance for him. His
persistence was rewarded. He was told to report for work the follow-
ing Monday morning.
His job was to be that of a draftsman at two dollars a day, or twelve
dollars a week. And that was his start in America, secured principally
by his persistent effort, within two weeks after he landed at Castle
Garden See
Promptly upon finding employment, Steinmetz took steps to es-
tablish himself in the western republic in another respect. Unwavering
in his decision that America would be his home and his country thence-
forth, he had speedily appeared before a naturalization court and
taken out his first papers. He wanted to become a citizen of the new
land to which he had come. This purpose was consummated in due
time, for five years later he returned to Yonkers and received his
second papers, which raised him to the status of a fully naturalized
citizen of the United States. . . .
Long before Steinmetz had witnessed the universal adoption of his
symbolic method, indeed, only a few months after his final paper on
the law of hysteresis losses, the Eickemeyer & Osterheld Company
passed out of existence as a separate business establishment. The
interests of the company were purchased by a recently formed con-
cern, which nad come into existence on April 12, 1892, the General
Electric Company. .. .
Primarily the General Electric Company bought Eickemeyer’s
business because of the latter’s patents and valuable electrical applica-
No. 153] Steinmetz: Immigrant, Scientist, Teacher 647
tions. Secondarily, it is quite evident that the General Electric
Company wanted the services of the youthful mathematical master,
Steinmetz.
The news of the whole transaction was imparted to Steinmetz by
Eickemeyer, who told him that it had been arranged for him to be
transferred to the General Electric Company. Steinmetz appears to
have consented without the slightest hesitation.
A few days later, Steinmetz met some of the General Electric
officials, who came to Yonkers to see what they had bought and to
confirm the understanding that Eickemeyer’s brainy engineer was to
enter the new organization. ... [DJuring this period Steinmetz
met for the first time E. W. Rice, Jr., later president of the General
Electric Company and now honorary chairman of its board of direc-
HOUSE.
Mr. Rice in particular was the representative of the General Electric
Company who interviewed Steinmetz on the question of entering the
employ of the General Electric. He describes his visit to Eickemeyer’s
plant, and his first meeting with young Steinmetz, as follows:
“T was then in charge of the manufacturing and engineering of our
company, and my views were sought as to the desirability of acquiring
Eickemeyer’s work. I remember giving hearty approval, with the
understanding that we should thereby secure the services for our
company of a young engineer named Steinmetz. I had read articles
by him which impressed me with his originality and intellectual power,
and believed that he would prove a valuable addition to our engineer-
ing force.
“T shall never forget our first meeting at Eickemeyer’s workshop
in Yonkers. I was startled, and somewhat disappointed, by the
strange sight of a small, frail body, surmounted by a large head, with
long hair hanging to the shoulders, clothed in an old cardigan jacket,
cigar in mouth, sitting cross-legged on a laboratory work table.
“My disappointment was but momentary, and completely dis-
appeared the moment he began to talk. I instantly felt the strange
power of his piercing but kindly eyes, and as he continued, his enthu-
siasm, his earnestness, his clear conceptions and marvelous grasp of
engineering problems convinced me that we had indeed made a great
find. It needed no prophetic insight to realize that here was a great
man, who spoke with the authority of accurate and profound knowl-
648 Science and Invention [1889-1912
edge, and one who, if given the opportunity, was destined to render
great service to our industry.
“I was delighted when, without a moment’s hesitation, he accepted
my suggestion that hecome with us.”
As revealed by Mr. Rice, Steinmetz did most of his work on the calcu-
lation of alternating current phenomena after going with the General
Electric Company. His mastery of this problem did much to enable
the General Electric Company to forge ahead until it commanded a
position of leadership in the world of electrical affairs. As Mr. Rice
has expressed it, “Steinmetz brought order out of chaos” in the matter
of alternating current calculations.
“He abolished the mystery and obscurity surrounding alternating
current apparatus, and soon taught our engineers how to design such
machines with as much ease and certainty as those employing the old
familiar direct current. . . .
“Tt is not too much to say that his genius and creative ability was
largely responsible for the rapid progress made in the commercial
introduction of alternating current apparatus.”
In the late winter of 1902-03 Dr. Steinmetz entered upon his duties
as professor of electrical engineering at Union College. It was the
beginning of a ten-year period in his life devoted to a unique leader-
ship among young men, a period which left its impress upon the slowly
shaping destinies of numerous fresh young lives and simultaneously
stirred in Dr. Steinmetz’s own life his ever-sensitive social instincts,
appealing directly to the fraternal side of his nature. . . .
He could hardly be called a strict disciplinarian in the class-room.
Yet his lectures were usually so well worth while, so original, and so
lucid as to hold the interest of his students through an entire course.
If any situation arose in which he was moved to comment on some
laxity of procedure in his classes, he invariably did so in characteristic
quiet fashion. His manner was mild; but it was always evident that
he was perfectly aware of what was going on, knew instantly when he
was taken advantage of by the thoughtless or the drone, and was too
discerning to be deceived, no matter what the occasion. . . .
He possessed a remarkably clear diction; and he invariably un-
folded his subject in a spirited and entertaining manner, so that even
a technical lecture, as he handled it, was decidedly effective.
As a result, his classes gained a vivid impression of the broad back-
No. 154] Ingenuity in Motor Manufacturing 649
ground of the subject, securing a sound conception of the funda-
mentals. Even though sometimes left floundering by the ultra-
technical exposition to which they had listened, the students of Dr.
Steinmetz carried away with them a realization that electrical en-
gineering was a vast and tremendous field, a profession of unimagin-
able possibilities, in which no man with ambition and opportunity
could feel restricted. . . .
Other educational institutions realized that under Dr. Steinmetz
the students at Union were getting a conception of fundamentals
which was bound to fire them to unusual endeavors. Dr. Steinmetz’s
contagious faith in his subject, an overpowering personal enthusiasm,
and a manner of presentation that was fascinating to all except the
utterly indifferent were responsible for this result, almost as much as
his utter mastery of the course. .
Dr. Steinmetz lost no opportunity, while he was a college professor,
of urging his theory of a broad general education for technical men.
He always insisted that no student could fully understand electrical
engineering in just four years. That, he contended, was merely long
enough to enable him to lay a foundation, upon which he must per-
severingly build as time went on.
John Winthrop Hammond, Charles Proteus Steinmetz (New York, Century Co.,
1924), 129-290, passim. Reprinted by permission of the author.
——————
154. Ingenuity in Motor Manufacturing (1914)
BY HENRY FORD (1922)
For Ford, see No. 113 above; and see also J. M. Miller, The Amazing Story of
Henry Ford. For an elaborately illustrated account of quantity production of
automobiles, see National Geographic Magazine, October, 1923.
T is self-evident that a majority of the people in the world
are not mentally—even if they are physically—capable of
making a good living. That is, they are not capable of furnishing
with their own hands a sufficient quantity of the goods which this
world needs to be able to exchange their unaided product for the
goods which they need. I have heard it said, in fact I believe it is
650 Science and Invention [r914
quite a current thought, that we have taken skill out of work. We
have not. We have put in skill. We have put a higher skill into
planning, management, and tool building, and the results of that skill
are enjoyed by the man who is not skilled. This I shall later enlarge
on.
We have to recognize the unevenness in human mental equip-
ments. If every job in our place required skill the place would never
have existed. Sufficiently skilled men to the number needed could
not have been trained in a hundred years. A million men working
by hand could not even approximate our present daily output. No
one could manage a million men. But more important than that,
the product of the unaided hands of those million men could not be
sold at a price in consonance with buying power. And even if it were
possible to imagine such an aggregation and imagine its management
and correlation, just think of the area that it would have to occupy!
How many of the men would be engaged, not in producing, but in
merely carrying from place to place what the other men had produced?
I cannot see how under such conditions the men could possibly be paid
more than ten or twenty cents a day—for of course it is not the
employer who pays wages. He only handles the money. It is the
product that pays the wages and it is the management that arranges
the production so that the product may pay the wages.
The more economical methods of production did not begin all at
once. They began gradually—just as we began gradually to make our
own parts. “Model T” was the first motor that we made ourselves.
The great economies began in assembling and then extended to other
sections so that, while to-day we have skilled mechanics in plenty,
they do not produce automobiles—they make it easy for others to
produce them. Our skilled men are the tool makers, the experi-
mental workmen, the machinists, and the pattern makers. They are
as good as any men in the world—so good, indeed, that they should
not be wasted in doing that which the machines they contrive can do
better. The rank and file of men come to us unskilled; they learn
their jobs within a few hours or a few days. If they do not learn
within that time they will never be of any use to us. These men are,
many of them, foreigners, and all that is required before they are taken
on is that they should be potentially able to do enough work to pay
the overhead charges on the floor space they occupy. They do not
No. 154] Ingenuity in Motor Manufacturing 651
have to be able-bodied men. We have jobs that require great physical
strength—although they are rapidly lessening; we have other jobs
that require no strength whatsoever—jobs which, as far as strength
is concerned, might be attended to by a child of three. . .
A Ford car contains about five thousand parts—that is counting
screws, nuts, and all. Some of the parts are fairly bulky and others
are almost the size of watch parts. In our first assembling we simply
started to put a car together at a spot on the floor and workmen
brought to it the parts as they were needed in exactly the same way
that one builds a house. When we started to make parts it was
natural to create a single department of the factory to make that
part, but usually one workman performed all of the operations neces-
sary on a small part. The rapid press of production made it necessary
to devise plans of production that would avoid having the workers
falling over one another. The undirected worker spends more of
his time walking about for materials and tools than he does in work-
ing; he gets small pay because pedestrianism is not a highly paid
line.
The first step forward in assembly came when we began taking the
work to the men instead of the men to the work. We now have two
general principles in all operations—that a man shall never have to
take more than one step, if possibly it can be avoided, and that no
man need ever stoop over.
The principles of assembly are these:
(1) Place the tools and the men in the sequence of the operation
so that each component part shall travel the least possible distance
while in the process of finishing.
(2) Use work slides or some other form of carrier so that when a
workman completes his operation, he drops the part always in the
same place—which place must always be the most convenient place
to his hand—and if possible have gravity carry the part to the next
workman for his operation.
(3) Use sliding assembling lines by which the parts to be assembled
are delivered at convenient distances.
The net result of the application of these principles is the reduction
of the necessity for thought on the part of the worker and the reduc-
tion of his movements to a minimum. He does as nearly as possible
only one thing with only one movement... .
652 Science and Invention [r914
Along about April 1, 1913, we first tried the experiment of an as-
sembly line. We tried it on assembling the fly-wheel magneto. We
try everything in a little way first—we will rip out anything once
we discover a better way, but we have to know absolutely that the
new way is going to be better than the old before we do anything
drastic.
I believe that this was the first moving line ever installed. The idea
came in a general way from the overhead trolley that the Chicago
packers use in dressing beef. We had previously assembled the fly-
wheel magneto in the usual method. With one workman doing a
complete job he could turn out from thirty-five to forty pieces in a
nine-hour day, or about twenty minutes to an assembly. What he
did alone was then spread into twenty-nine operations; that cut down
the assembly time to thirteen minutes, ten seconds. Then we raised
the height of the line eight inches—this was in 1914—and cut the time
to seven minutes. Further experimenting with the speed that the work
should move at cut the time down to five minutes. In short, the result
is this: by the aid of scientific study one man is now able to do some-
what more than four did only a comparatively few years ago. That
line established the efficiency of the method and we now use it every-
where. The assembling of the motor, formerly done by one man, is
now divided into eighty-four operations—those men do the work
that three times their number formerly did. In a short time we tried
out the plan on the chassis.
About the best we had done in stationary chassis assembling was
an average of twelve hours and twenty-eight minutes per chassis.
We tried the experiment of drawing the chassis with a rope and wind-
lass down a line two hundred fifty feet long. Six assemblers travelled
with the chassis and picked up the parts from piles placed along the
line. This rough experiment reduced the time to five hours fifty
minutes per chassis. In the early part of 1914 we elevated the as-
sembly line. We had adopted the policy of “man-high”’ work; we had
one line twenty-six and three quarter inches and another twenty-four
and one half inches from the floor—to suit squads of different heights.
The waist-high arrangement and a further subdivision of work sc
that each man had fewer movements cut down the labour time per
chassis to one hour thirty-three minutes. Only the chassis was then
assembled in the line. The body was placed on in “John R. Street ”—
No. 144] Ingenuity in Motor Manufacturing 653
the famous street that runs through our Highland Park factories.
Now the line assembles the whole car.
It must not be imagined, however, that all this worked out as
quickly as it sounds. The speed of the moving work had to be care-
fully tried out; in the fly-wheel magneto we first had a speed of sixty
inches per minute. That was too fast. Then we tried eighteen inches
per minute. That was too slow. Finally we settled on forty-four
inches per minute. The idea is that a man must not be hurried in his
work—he must have every second necessary but not a single un-
necessary second. We have worked out speeds for each assembly,
for the success of the chassis assembly caused us gradually to
overhaul our entire method of manufacturing and to put all assembling
in mechanically driven lines. The chassis assembling line, for in-
stance, goes at a pace of six feet per minute; the front axle assembly
line goes at one hundred eighty-nine inches per minute. In the chassis
assembling are forty-five separate operations or stations. The first
men fasten four mudguard brackets to the chassis frame; the motor
arrives on the tenth operation and so on in detail. Some men do only
one or two small operations, others do more. The man who places a
part does not fasten it—the part may not be fully in place until after
several operations later. The man who puts in a bolt does not put
on the nut; the man who puts on the nut does not tighten it. On
operation number thirty-four the budding motor gets its gasoline; it
has previously received lubrication; on operation forty-four the radia-
tor is filled with water, and on operation number forty-five the car
drives out on to John R. Street.
Essentially the same ideas have been applied to the assembling of
the motor. In October, 1913, it required nine hours and fifty-four
minutes of labour time to assemble one motor; six months later, by
the moving assembly method, this time had been reduced to five
hours and fifty-six minutes. Every piece of work in the shops moves;
it may move on hooks on overhead chains going to assembly in the
exact order in which the parts are required; it may travel on a moving
platform, or it may go by gravity, but the point is that there is no
lifting or trucking of anything other than materials. Materials are
brought in on small trucks or trailers operated by cut-down Ford
chassis, which are sufficiently mobile and quick to get in and out of
any aisle where they may be required to go. No workman has any-
654 Science and Invention [1918
thing to do with moving or lifting anything. That is all in a separate
department—the department of transportation.
From My Life and Work, by Henry Ford (Garden City, copyright 1922, Dou-
bleday, Page and Company), 77-85 passim.
155. War Surgery (1918)
FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES CURRENT HISTORY
New weapons, in the form of high explosives and poison gas, created fresh med-
ical and surgical problems, and gave opportunity for the development, during the
World War, of treatments that have since proved of immense value in peace time.
On the efficiency of crippled soldiers, see also No. 140 above.
ODERN medicine and surgery have made the present war
the least destructive to human life, in proportion to the num-
bers engaged, of any in the history of the world. That is what the
most eminent physicians and surgeons assert. This statement, con-
sidered in conjunction with the length of allied casualty lists, at first
seems incredible, but it must be borne in mind that in other wars we
reckoned the number engaged in thousands, while in this one the
figures run well up in millions, and aside from actual soldiers, in no
other conflict have there been within the firing line so many people
who were not fighting, but erecting hospitals, barracks and officers’
quarters, treating and nursing wounded, engineering the construction
of railroads, storehouses, bridges, and all the means by which a modern
army is provisioned, cared for, and transported.
In the Civil War 7 per cent. of the soldiers perished yearly. Dr.
‘Woods Hutchinson is authority for the statement that the annual
death rate in the allied armies is 3 per cent., while an official survey
made for Congress places the French mortality for 1917 as low as
1.375 per cent. Again, during the Civil War from 20 to 50 per cent.
of those injured in battle never recovered; but now from 70 to 80 per
cent. of the wounded are returned to the front within forty days. Of
the men who live six hours after being injured 90 per cent. recover,
and 95 per cent. of those who reach the casualty clearing houses are
saved.
No. 155] War Surgery 655
Five-sixths of the deaths in the Civil War resulted from what are
now known as preventable diseases. The medical catastrophes of the
Spanish-American war are still fresh in the recollection of this genera-
tion. The havoc which typhoid and other diseases of intestinal
origin wrought among the troops who were never engaged in battle
is a memory filled with shame. ‘Those diseases were preventable
then as now, but medical science had not progressed as it has in the
present day. Modern methods of inoculation and sanitation have
triumphed over disease and modern surgeons have accomplished
results almost beyond belief. . . .
Cholera is under control by disinfecting drinking water and vacci-
nating against it. Dysentery is being held down to a low rate by
water sterilization and latrine sanitation. Preventive measures have
robbed spinal meningitis—at one time one of the most baffling and
cruel of plagues—of its terrors. Epidemic meningitis, which in earlier
wars was dreaded under the name of “spotted fever,” is now success-
fully treated by means of a curative serum. ‘Trench fever,” a sick-
ness which rarely kills, but which is the most prolific source of dis-
ability with which our armies have to contend, has not been done
away with, but at least its source—the body louse—has been deter-
mined, and the question now becomes one of prevention and
sanitation.
The most frightful scourges of former wars have been tetanus
(lockjaw) and gaseous gangrene. Soil highly fertilized with animal
excrement, like that of France, contains in large numbers the spores.
of tetanus and gaseous gangrene bacilli. From the earth they gain
access to the clothing of men. When particles of cloth or dirt, as fre-
quently happens, are carried into wounds by bullets or shell fragments,
tetanus or gaseous gangrene, or both, frequently develop. To Dr.
C. G. Bull of the Rockefeller Institute belongs the discovery of the
antitoxin for the gas bacillus. Recent experiments have proved that
a single serum injection may be made carrying the antitoxins for both
tetanus and gaseous gangrene. As soon as possible after a wounded
man is picked up he is inoculated, and both of these diseases are now
practically under control. . . .
The greatest addition to the modern knowledge of antisepsis came.
through the discoveries of Dr. Dakin in experimenting with chlorine
preparations. It remained for Dr. Alexis Carrel to develop a way to
656 Science and Invention [1918
use the solution compounded by Dr. Dakin. He worked with Dr.
Dakin, and they experimented with 200 antiseptics before the hypo-
chlorite solution was perfected. Dr. Carrel then invented a method of
application which made it practical. His work was done in New York,
at the Experimental Hospital, built for studying the diseases of the
war and treatment of the wounded, and located just below the Rocke-
feller Institute on Sixty-fourth Street and the East River.
Dr. Carrel’s invention is a unique mode of wound irrigation. It
consists of a system of little rubber tubes, pierced here and there for
the liquid to flow out. The wound is cleansed, the tubes are laid in
and fed from a glass container which hangs above the bed. The flow
is regulated by stopcocks. Of the wounded treated at Compiégne
by this method, 99 per cent. were healed by first intention. Whereas
formerly amputations frequently resulted in painful stumps, and the
healing process consumed from six to eighteen months, now, when
treated with the Dakin solution they heal quickly, and artificial legs
can almost always be fitted within from four to six weeks after the
treatment is first given. The latest method of treating wounds in-
cludes the excision of all contaminated tissue, muscle, and even bone.
This is on the theory that it is better and more economical to do the
thing well at first than to risk a spreading of the infection and a second
amputation. The use of the knife as a vital factor in cleansing wounds
was the discovery of Dr. Pierre Duval of the French Army. Every
bit of infected or suspected tissue is removed. When the wound may
be declared “mechanically clean” it is usually closed. That is a
matter of surgical technique. Under this treatment many severe
wounds heal in two weeks. This means an enormous saving in man
power, bandages, nursing, and surgical attention.
In connection with this treatment the transfusion of blood taken
from slightly wounded but healthy men, who are willing to make the
sacrifice, is freely used. It has been discovered that blood for trans-
fusion can be kept for several weeks without deteriorating. Every
casualty clearing station now endeavors to have in its icebox in read-
iness for emergencies about thirty pints of blood.
To another French surgeon, Dr. de Villeon, is due the discovery
of a method of operating on the lungs for the successful removal of
foreign matter. To expedite the examination of the wounded, the
American Army Medical Department has developed a mobile X-ray
No. 155] War Surgery 657
outfit which may be taken to the front line trenches. A very important
phase of surgery is the restoration of faces of persons supposed to be
permanently disfigured. To reach the desired effect a photograph
of the man, taken before his injury, is studied by a skillful French
sculptor who has given three years to this work. He makes a careful
model of the face in plaster, which is used by the surgeon as a guide.
By transplanting bits of cartilage and bone from the man’s ribs or
legs, holding them in place by paraffin or the plastic material used by
dentists, and then bringing over them portions of skin lifted from the
forehead or cheek or neck—skin which is left with some natural
attachment to aid its nutrition—a new face is actually built up, and
one which is not only agreeable in appearance, but which resembles
the man’s former likeness. This work is being done in England,
where twelve surgeons are working in collaboration with the sculptor.
A reconstruction clinic has been established in New York.
In this war, as in no other in history, careful consideration has been
given to the future of individuals who have been crippled in battle.
For years in this country more men have annually been totally or
partially disabled by industrial accidents than have been incapacitated
by the war in Europe. These injured men left to fend for themselves
have, in many cases, lost their grip on their self-respect, taken to
drink, and, slowly deteriorating, have become either a menace to life
and property or wards of the State. Comparatively little of a con-
structive nature has been done to aid them. There has been no
scientific concerted effort in their behalf, and, paradoxically enough,
it has remained for war, that great destructive power, to arouse
intelligent employers from their apathy toward this enormous
economic waste. The application of methods of reclamation to the
injured in battle will be bound to have its reaction for good toward
those disabled in industrial life. .
To aid the appearance and efficiency of the crippled, many new and
valuable types of artificial arms and legs have been invented. An
artificial leg adopted by the Government is the invention of Major
David Silver, Medical Corps, U. S. A. It is said that a cripple, after
he has become accustomed to it, may learn to walk with almost
natural movements. No crutch or support is necessary. The foot
movement is simulated by a jointed instep. The invention has been
tried successfully by a soldier who has lost both legs. When it is
658 Science and Invention [1919
properly clad and booted it is difficult for a casual observer to detect
its artificiality.
The Red Cross Institute for Crippled and Disabled Men at 311
Fourth Avenue, New York City, maintains a training school and
acts as a clearing house for men who have been taught. The institute
has a room fully equipped with facilities for enabling the cripple to
make his own limbs. Here plaster casts of stumps are taken and
finished limbs are adjusted. Here, too, are displayed not only artificial
feet and legs, but arms and hands almost perfect in their imitation
of nature. But the latter are for dress only. At work an armless
man uses the devices which will best aid him to fulfill his task. His
working arms are fitted not with hands, but with tools, chucks and
hooks, which may be interchangeably adjusted—whatever will most
adequately take the place of the hand which he has lost. . . .
Pennsylvania is the pioneer State, as such, in enabling injured
soldiers to get on their feet again. The Bureau of Employment
of the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry maintains
card files, which, compiled from a Statewide questionnaire to em-
ployers of all kinds of labor, contain a list of 42,111 jobs open to
crippled soldiers and sailors. Many of them are skilled tasks which
may be performed by men who have lost one or both legs or an arm.
Staff article in New York Times Current History, October, 1918 (New York),
120-125 passim.
phi Ay ees
156. The First Continuous Trans-Atlantic Flight (1919)
FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES CURRENT HISTORY
Previous to the flight of Alcock and Brown, other aircraft had crossed the ocean,
but only by breaking the trip, as, for example, at the Azores. Hawker and Grieve,
in their attempt to make the flight in one hop, were picked up by a Norwegian
tramp steamer off the coast of Ireland. Many other attempts, both successful and
disastrous, followed. For Lindbergh’s widely acclaimed New York-to-Paris flight,
see No. 68 above.
HE great achievement of flying across the Atlantic Ocean with-
out a single stop was accomplished for the first time June 14-15,
1919, by Captain John Alcock and Lieutenant Arthur W. Brown,
one an Englishman, the other an American, when they covered the
No. 156] First Continuous Trans-Atlantic Flight 659
1,980 miles between Newfoundland and Ireland in 16 hours and 12
minutes at a speed of 120 miles an hour. The night of June 14-15 thus
became a permanent landmark in the history of the conquest of the air.
After the disastrous ending to the desperate attempt of Harry
Hawker and his companion, Grieve, to cross the ocean in a single-
engined heavier-than-air machine, the contest for the $50,000 prize
offered by Lord Northcliffe’s paper, The Daily Mail, centered about
three ventures. First in public knowledge was Captain Raynham
and his Martynside machine, which came to grief in an attempt to
take the air one hour after Harry Hawker. Raynham had sent for
a new engine for his badly damaged machine, and was seeking a new
pilot to replace his former associate, who had been seriously injured.
A big Handley-Page plane was being assembled at St. John’s and
tried out by Admiral Mark Kerr in keen rivalry with a third new
contestant, a Vickers-Vimy machine piloted and navigated by Captain
John Alcock, a British air officer, and Lieutenant Arthur W. Brown,
an American aviator.
The Vickers-Vimy plane got away first. It took the air on June 14
at 4:28 P. M., Greenwich mean time. On June 15, 1919, at 8:40 A. M.,
Greenwich mean time, the ultimate goal of all the ambitions which
flying men have cherished since the Wright brothers first rose from
the earth in a heavier-than-air machine was realized when Captain
Alcock and Lieutenant Brown landed near the centre of the Irish
coast after a nonstop flight of 1,980 miles from Newfoundland and
across the Atlantic Ocean.
One feature of the record-breaking flight was its unexpectedness.
Plans for receiving Alcock and Brown were hurriedly formulated by
the British Aéro Club and the Air Ministry. It had not been believed
that the aviators would be able to leave Newfoundland for another
week. But, spurred on by a trial trip of the big Handley-Page ma-
chine, Alcock and Brown had determined to be the first to depart.
With a very small running space they managed only by the most
dexterous handling to get their machine to rise. After the big biplane
got under way, its wireless aérials were soon carried away by the
gale, and therefore the aviators could send back no message to indicate
their progress. The following day they landed at Clifden, Ireland, in
a bog near the wireless station. The aviators were dazed by the force
of the impact on striking the ground.
660 Science and Invention [1919
When the officers, operators, and soldiers from the wireless plant
rushed toward the machine after it landed, Alcock said: “This is the
Vickers-Vimy machine. We have just come from Newfoundland.”
The little crowd gasped, and then sent up a rousing cheer. The brief
message sent by the successful aviators from Clifden to the Aéro
Club read as follows:
Landed at Clifden at 8:40 A. M., Greenwich mean time, June 15, Vickers-Vimy
Atlantic machine leaving Newfoundland coast at 4:28 P. M., Greenwich mean
time, June 14. Total time, 16 hours 12 minutes.
A modest description that came from the airmen at Clifden told of
an adventurous and amazingly hazardous enterprise. Fogs and mists
hung over the North Atlantic, and the Vickers-Vimy biplane climbed
and dived, struggling to extricate herself from the folds of these worst
enemies of aérial flight. Rising to a height of 11,000 feet and swooping
down almost to the surface of the ocean, the two aviators at times
found themselves flying upside down only ten feet above the water.
Mists robbed the night of the advantage of the full moon, the wireless
apparatus was torn away by the wind, and the two young aviators
were thrown upon their own resources almost from the start. The
skillful navigation which brought the machine near to the centre of
the Irish coast line was one of the finest features of the flight.
The account given by Captain Alcock to the reporter of The Daily
Mail was as follows:
At Signal Hill, Newfoundland, Lieutenant Brown set our course for the ocean
on 124 degrees of the compass. We kept that course until well on in the night.
I had the engine throttled down nicely and I let her do her own climbing.
At dark we were about 4,000 feet up. We found it very cloudy and misty. We
were between layers of cloud and could see neither the sea nor the sky. After the
first hour we had got into these clouds, one lot 2,000 feet up and the other 6,000
feet. It was impossible to see the sea to get our bearings.
Drift clouds above obscured the sun, and when the night came we could see
neither stars nor moon, so we flew on our original course until we struck a patch
about 3 A. M. where we could see a few stars.
Brown gave me a new course of 110 degrees compass points, and we went on
steadily until the weather started to get very thick again. About 4 A.M.or5 A.M.
we could see nothing. The bank of fog was extremely thick, and we began to have
a very rough time.
The air speed indicator jammed. It stood at 90, and I knew not exactly what
I was doing. It jammed through the sleet freezing in it, and it smelt smoky.
We did some comic stunts then. I believe we looned the loop and by accident
No. 156] First Continuous Trans-Atlantic Flight 66x
we did a deep spiral. It was very alarming. We had no sense of the horizon. We
came down quickly from 4,000 feet until we saw water very clearly. That gave me
my horizon again and I was all right. That period only lasted a few seconds, but
it seemed ages.
It came to an end when we were within fifty feet of the water, with the machine
practically on its back.
The air speed indicator again began to work as a result of the swift dive.
We climbed after that and got on fairly well until we got to 6,000 feet, and the
fog was there again. I climbed twice on top of it, only to find banks of clouds. We
went higher and saw the moon and one or two stars. We “carried on” until dawn.
We never saw the sun rise. There was a bank of fog also on top of the lower
cloud. We climbed up to 11,000 feet. It was hailing and snowing. The machine
was covered with ice. That was about 6 o’clock in the morning, and it remained
like that until the hour before we landed.
My radiator shutter and water temperature indicator were covered with ice
for four or five hours. Lieutenant Brown had continually climbed up to chip off
the ice with a knife.
The speed indicator was full of frozen particles and gave trouble again. They
came out when we got lower an hour before we landed. We came down and flew
over the sea at 300 feet. It was still cloudy, but we could see the sun as it tried to
break through.
It was a terrible trip. We never saw a boat, and we got no wireless messages at
all. We flew along the water and we had doubts as to our position, although we
believed we were “there or thereabouts.” We looked out for land, expecting to
find it any time.
We saw land about 9:15 A. M. when we suddenly discovered the coast. It was
great to do that. We saw two little islands, which must have been East-Sal and
Turbot Islands. We came along and got to Ardbear Bay, an inlet of Clifden Bay,
and when we saw the wireless mast we knew where we were exactly.
When still over Clifden village I saw after a few minutes what I took to be a nice
field—a lovely meadow. We came down and made a perfect landing, but it was
abog. The wheels sank axle deep in the field. The Vimy toppled over on her nose.
The lower plane is badly damaged and broken and both propellers are deeply
sunk in the bog, but I think they are not broken. The engines are all right.
The successful Vimy machine was built largely of steel. It had
multiple steel tanks for fuel storage, and was equipped with double
engines. Alcock, whose name was almost unknown to England before
his flight, was described by his friends as a man of reticent personality.
He had been an instructor and passenger carrier at Brooklands, the
flying centre outside London, since 1911. His chief adventure in
aviation had been in bombing expeditions against the Turks during
the war; a forced descent due to engine failure had led to his imprison-
ment for two years. Brown had been an aviator since the age of 17,
662 Science and Invention [1922
and at one time had conducted a military school of aërial navigation.
The absolute correctness of his calculations during the trip, which
guided the Vimy machine with scientific precision to its exact goal,
the Clifden Wireless Station, was one of the most striking features of
the flight.
Staff article in New York Times Current History, July, 1919 (New York), 112-114.
Å— e
157. The Project at Muscle Shoals (1922)
BY JUDSON C. WELLIVER
Welliver is a newspaper man connected with western and Frank A. Munsey
papers, who was selected by President Roosevelt to gather data in Europe in 1907,
and has been attached to the White House organization since March 4, 1921. The
long conflict of public and private interests to determine the ultimate utilization
of the power site at Muscle Shoals has found expression in much debate but little
action. A strong opposition has prevented its transfer to private hands at a frac-
tion of its cost, and the government has continued unwilling to make a further
large investment in the development.—Bibliography as in No. 79.
HE House Committee on Military Affairs has gone into
the whole question of water-powers, recovery of nitrogen
from the air, manufacture and sale of fertilizers, electrification of rail-
roads, electro-chemistry and electro-metallurgy—and, generally, into
the whole fascinating realm of the impending hydro-electric revolution
in industrial life.
The basis of the whole project is the great water power in the
Tennessee. To develop this three dams are proposed. Dam No. 2,
the most important, is 4446 feet long, at the foot of the rapids’ steepest
section. On both sides the river’s banks are high walls of solid rock,
and its bed is of the same material. The dam is keyed deep into the
bed- and bank-rocks. The dam will be 135 feet high, from foundation
footing to the roadway at the top; about 100 feet from the natural low
water to the roadway level. This dam will back the stream up seven-
teen miles and will give the water a useful fall of ninety-five feet to
the eighteen great turbines that will turn generators to convert its
flow into electricity. According to the water supply, as many as are
desired of these turbines can be used. At the high-water stages, with
all working, 540,000 horsepower will be produced.
No. 157] The Project at Muscle Shoals 663
Seventeen miles upstream is the site of Dam No. 3, whose con-
struction is not yet begun. It is considerably longer—6725 feet,
but only fifty feet high, giving the water a useful fall of thirty-eight
teet to its turbines. At full flow, it will develop about 216,000
horsepower. This dam will back water seventy-five miles up-
stream.
Dam No. 1 is a minor affair, to carry out the navigation improve-
ment. It will be only fifteen feet high, and its site is two miles below
No. 2.
The Tennessee’s flow varies, according to measurements covering
fifty years, from 7800 to 500,000 cubic feet per second. That means,
of course, a very wide variance between its highest and lowest power
potentialities. At the lowest stage ever recorded it would produce,
with the installation planned, about 100,000 horsepower; at the
highest, 756,000, and still leave water capable of developing 1,000,000
horsepower to run unused over the spillways. This is sheer waste;
and to prevent it, so far as possible, Mr. Ford proposes to go back to
the upper Tennessee, and to some of its tributaries, and build other
dams to store this water at times of heavy flow, and free it in periods
of low water to enlarge the flow at the power dams. Some of these
storage dams would themselves be equipped with turbines and pro-
duce additional power.
This wide variability of flow represents the greatest economic
difficulty in harnessing “flashy” rivers for power. The power that
can be relied on absolutely all the year round is called “primary”;
the varying amounts in excess of this are “secondary” power. Muscle
Shoals is planned to produce 100,000 primary or minimum constant
horsepower. But this minimum would be touched only a few days
each year; the rest of the year, the power would be much greater,
depending on the water’s stage, and reaching a maximum of 756,000
horsepower. Add 120,000 supplemental steam, and include minor
water powers which it is proposed to develop and link up, and a round
one million maximum is in sight. . . .
The Tennessee is rated sixth among American rivers. Rising in
Virginia, eastern Kentucky, eastern Tennessee and North Carolina,
it flows generally southwesterly, into northern Alabama, where it
bends northwest, crosses Tennessee and Kentucky, and flows into the
Ohio at Paducah... .
664 Science and Invention [1922
If you will look at a map of the southern Appalachian region, you
will observe that the rivers contain falls or long rapids where they come
down from the mountains to the coastal plain. The geologists say
that a long time before Adam and Eve flourished, the coastal plain
at some period dropped a varying distance, and that these falls and
rapids mark the line of the fault. Muscle Shoals offers the greatest
water power merely because the Tennessee is the greatest of these
rivers. It presents a drop of 136 feet in 37 miles; at the steepest
section, a fall of 100 feet in 17 miles. The Wilson Dam is at the foot
of this 17 miles of steepest fall. . . .
With the era of hydro-electric development, about the beginning
of this century, Muscle Shoals began to be regarded as one of the
greatest water-power opportunities, combined with the possibility
of at last making navigation practicable between the upper and lower
reaches of the Tennessee River. The Tennessee has at all times been
one of the most navigated streams; if it were improved and the indus-
trial possibilities of its basin developed, it would be among the world’s
most used rivers of commerce. It drains 44,000 square miles, having
a rainfall of 50 to 70 inches, the largest of any equal area in the country
except the Gulf coast of Louisiana. The importance of navigation
improvement is greater because the Tennessee Valley’s riches are
largely in mineral, metal, and agricultural products which run to
large tonnages. In 1918 the value of the metal and mineral products
produced in the area tributary to the Tennessee River was about
$78,000,000, the agricultural products amounted to $470,000,000 and
the basic or semi-manufactured products were valued at more than
$12,000,000—a total of $560,000,000 for the region. No other power
than that developed from water and used as electricity could bring
full utilization of the undeveloped mineral riches, because they re-
quire very great and very cheap power.
For that matter, the development of most of the latent riches in the
earth’s crust must depend on power in such immense units and tre-
mendous quantities as can be possible only through the use of water
power. The truth is that industry is near the end of its coal age. . . .
The other day I stood on a high point on the south bank of the
Tennessee, at a point where the roaring stream is nearly two miles
wide, and suggests the Amazon or Yukon. My engineering friend
pointed to the stream and said:
No. 157] The Project at Muscle Shoals 665
At today’s stage of the river there is 800,000 horsepower passing us. It is the
power which we must harness, here and in hundreds of other places, if we are to
maintain our national position industrially. For power derived from steam and
coal is utterly inadequate to the demands of industrial chemistry and the electric
furnace. Power from coal and steam has been found to be utterly too expensive,
save in the most favorable circumstances. .
Both South America and Africa far surpass North America and Europe in
water powers. We think of Niagara, where there is already a commercial develop-
ment approaching a million horsepower, and imagine that our continent leads the
world. But we have only one Niagara, and our water powers in general will prove
far more expensive to develop.
This is the condition we have to look in the face. Our continent is less rich in
water power, and we have not made a great advance in developing what
we have... .
He proceeded to explain the difference between powers like Muscle
Shoals, and those produced by falls. At Niagara, which is ideal, a
substantially uniform volume of water goes over the falls the year
round. Nature has provided her own storage reservoir. Develop-
ment requires little more than the installation of the machinery. On
the other hand, at Muscle Shoals, it is necessary first to build a great
dam or series of dams to create your fall. These dams cost vast sums
on which interest must come out of the price of power. . . .
Immense capital is required for hydro-electric developments; and,
further, after the power is ready, industries must be brought to con-
sume it. So the operation must be spread over a long period. For
this reason the Government has enacted that water-power leases may
be made up to fifty years. .. .
When it became apparent that the United States was being drawn
into the European War, the Government entered upon a plan to de-
velop the Muscle Shoals power to take nitrogen from the air for use
in explosives. . . . Prime emphasis was laid, in favor of Muscle
Shoals, on the water power and the fact that it was far inland and
safe from enemy attack. Under the army engineers, plans were made
and construction begun. The program fell into two parts: first, the
construction of dams and electric power houses; second, the construc-
tion of great plants to produce nitrates from the air, and to be operated
by the water power, with supplemental steam power.
Under this program there has been expended something over $100,-
000,000 by the Government. On the side of power development,
roughly $17,000,000 has gone into the Wilson Dam at the foot of Mus-
666 Science and Invention [r922
cle Shoals. This is now about 30 per cent. finished, and various
authorities estimate that from eighteen to thirty-six months will be
required to complete it... .
The fact that $105,000,000 had been invested without a dollar’s
worth of product having been secured during the war (though due to
the fact that the plant was completed just as the fighting ended)
inevitably caused criticism. When, therefore, further appropriations
were asked, in peace-time, to continue the development, and to com-
plete the entire project, there was so much opposition that Congress,
in 1920, refused. From that time on the disposition of the Govern-
ment’s interests was the subject of much consideration, but no action.
Shortly after the present Administration came in, the War Depart-
ment sought interests that might buy the property. For a time it
actually looked as if nobody was going to want, at any price, proper-
ties on which more than $100,000,000 had been spent. Whoever
might take them over would be compelled to put in immense additional
capital. ...
On the face of it, Ford offers $5,000,000 for properties that cost
$85,000,000. But this must be reduced by $13,000,000, which went
into Nitrate Plant No. 1, which has been a failure in operation, leaving
about $72,000,000. This again can be scaled easily one-half, to get at
something like present cost to reproduce. Yet, assuming that Mr.
Ford offers $5,000,000 for properties that to-day could be reproduced
for $35,000,000, it still looks like a fine bargain.
The other side is that Mr. Ford is binding himself to produce the
equivalent of r10,0c0o tons of ammonium nitrate annually—about
one-fourth the present national fertilizer consumption of inorganic
nitrogen; and to sell a finished, concentrated, high-grade fertilizer
at an advance of only 8 per cent. over cost of production. This makes
the appeal to the farmers; while the advocates of war preparedness
insist that the Government can well afford to be liberal in view of the
offer to keep the nitrate plant always ready to manufacture explosives.
For the Government to do this would cost, it is estimated by the
Ordnance Department, some $2,475,000 annually. ...
Advocates of Muscle Shoals point to the varied riches of the Tennes-
see Valley and the Southern Appalachian region. Here, they say, is
an ideal place to demonstrate a water-power program big enough to
serve as a model for the whole nation. Here are railways to be electri-
No. 158] A Broadcasting Studio 667
fied, and enough power to do it and still leave a vast surplus for in-
dustrial requirements. Industrial development here would diffuse
the national industries, carrying many new enterprises into the South,
where industrial development has been retarded. This would help
solve the transportation question by moving large manufacturing
interests nearer to the consumers. . . . The Tennessee Basin has not
only water powers, but coal for supplementary steam power.
The availability of this area for producing munitions of war and
fertilizers, is particularly dwelt upon. The salt and sulphur of Louisi-
ana and Texas, both necessary in electro-chemical and explosive proc-
esses, can be brought by water. The greatest fluorspar deposits are in
western Kentucky, with water transport handy. Fluorspar is used
in chemical operations, manufacture of glass, high-grade steels,
aluminum production, etc. Great deposits of iron and copper are
tributary to Muscle Shoals. Phosphate rock occurs in enormous
quantities immediately adjacent. Bauxite, from which aluminum is
most easily recovered, exists in great deposits, the richest in Arkansas,
transportable by either rail or water. . . .
Not least of the war-time arguments for Muscle Shoals was its
interior location, safe from attack... .
From the point of view, then, of industry, fertilizers, national
defense, or more widely diffused manufacturing, or of railroad elec-
trification, Muscle Shoals appears peculiarly available. . . .
Judson C. Welliver, The Muscle Shoals Power and Industrial Project, in American
Review of Reviews, April, 1922 (New York), LXV, 382-391 passim.
ee
158. A Broadcasting Studio (1925)
BY GRAHAM McNAMEE
McNamee is one of the first to gain individual recognition as a radio announcer,
his distinction being based mainly on his graphic, extemporaneous descriptions of
public events—political conventions, boxing matches, and the like.
FTER the political conventions, I was more often at our studio
on Broadway, and perhaps some description of our business
operations may not be amiss before we go further afield.
668 Science and Invention [1925
Gradually the work had increased so that our two small rooms took
over other offices; and at this present writing we cover a whole floor
of this giant skyscraper, with a staff of a hundred, divided between
the program, commercial, plant, financial, and publicity departments,
including twenty-four stenographers much of whose time is taken up
with the mail received from the fans.
And, as in all other houses that have something to sell, we have a
staff of salesmen under the direction of a sales manager. The com-
modity they have to offer is not tangible and does not come in cans
or packages; by the quarter, half-hour, or full hour they sell it—noth-
ing less than time, “time on the air.” Here again distinction must be
drawn between the stations which like ours, WEAF, broadcast enter-
tainment, and those which send messages from person to person,
usually, these days, out to sea. Most entertainment stations have
their “time” divided between entertainment they themselves arrange,
and that broadcast for their clients for publicity purposes. I should
say they run roughly about fifty-fifty, that is, that half of the pro-
grams are “sustaining,” as we call our own, and half “commercial,”
as we term those programs which are paid for by outsiders. .
There is an art, of course, in the selection of the entertainment.
A fisheries association, for example, broadcasts weekly talks on fish,
and has engaged a woman to tell how to cook and serve them. She
also gives new recipes—and all in an interesting way. A life insurance
concern conducts setting-up exercises in the early morning. This
campaign not only emphasizes the name of the client and so keeps it
before the public, but it has a valuable by-product, since it improves
the average health of the hosts who each morning go through these
genuflections and roll so energetically on the floor, and thus conserves
the treasury of the life insurance company. So a program may be
double and triple shotted and much care must be taken in devising it.
It would be unprofitable, obviously, for an undertaker’s association
to get up a program of health-giving exercises. . .
The rates paid for “time on the air” depend on the number of sta-
tions which take the program of the client. One station alone costs
from $150 to $600 an hour, varying with the estimated density of
population of the region to which the station broadcasts, the more
thinly settled areas costing $150, and the metropolitan district $600.
in setting this last rate, WEAF is very conservative, reckoning on a
No. 158] A Broadcasting Studio 669
radius of only one hundred miles, when actually our programs have
been picked up from every state in the union, from as far south as
the Argentine, and from such far-off places as Cape Town, South
Africa, and the northern part of Scandinavia.
Each additional station the advertiser buys, of course, adds to the
expense. In broadcasting political events, we have as many as twenty-
seven stations; but fourteen is at present the largest number used for
the commercial programs.
An obscure tenor I remember once drifted into our studio when
radio was new and asked for and received a hearing. This, of course,
did not go out on the air; as at rehearsals he simply sang before the
microphone, and some of the management listened in another room
as his voice came over the loud-speaker. He made good; we gave him
a date; and these engagements increased in frequency. Finally we hit
on a picturesque name involving a play on words which caught the
fancy of the fans and also appealed to the sense of mystery. Now he
is one of the best-known singers not only on the radio program but
in large halls in the greatest cities.
Out of the west came another singer and composer, with little
reputation—only his voice and ukelele. We usually give an audition
to anyone who asks for it, if the candidate shows any symptoms of
talent, and we listened to him, later placing him on the program. The
fame here gained soon brought him to the attention of one of our
clients, and before long he was appearing each week in a commercial
hour for which he was very well paid, then sent by this same firm on a
tour abroad, to appear not only in concerts but before the microphones
in the capitals of Europe, New Zealand, and Australia.
So it can readily be seen that there are chances for the unknown,
particularly since in our programs we aim for variety and are ever on
the lookout for something new and original. .. .
In those days at the studio I met quite as many famous people as
I had in the big jobs outside. And one and all I found badly smitten,
on their first appearance, with that nervousness which we of the
staff call “mike fever.” Sometimes it is almost pathetic, the way
well-known figures—men of great power, too, who have held spell-
bound vast audiences—follow us around the studios, like little children
seeking moral support when they are to visit the dentist.
At the joint radio début of John McCormack and Lucrezia Bori,
670 Science and Invention [1925
those two famous singers were almost dead with fright, though each
showed it in a different manner.
McCormack, after the rehearsal, and while waiting to begin, simply
could not sit still; he paced the floor; then sat down, then stood up,
sat down again, then took to his caged-animal pacing up and down
once more, while all the time the perspiration ran off his face in
streams.
Bori, on the other hand, was still, and apparently composed, but
ice-cold. I knew it, for recognizing this strange symptom, too, she
asked me to touch her arms.
“ Just feel them,” she said, “they’re like ice—it’s almost as if I were
going to die.” . .
The American baritone, Reinald Werrenrath, on his first broad-
casting, paced wildly up and down the floor, the coat tails of his dress
suit flying—though he didn’t need to wear that, he had overlooked
the fact that his audience couldn’t see him—and kept exclaiming
humorously yet seriously enough: ‘‘I may be the worst baritone in
the world; but for a concert hall this is a darn sight worse than
Tam!”
Louise Homer’s sweet, gracious personality did not allow her to
show her fear in any excitable way. Instead she seemed to be thinking
of all the people to whom that night she might bring happiness. In-
deed, after the experience, she confessed with tears in her eyes: “I
was overwhelmed; the thought of all those dear people all over the
country listening to me, in little farmhouses and, maybe, tenements,
was overpowering!”
What seemed to puzzle Schumann-Heink most was that we didn’t
find fault. “You don’t scold enough,” she said to me.
“But Madame,” I replied, “how could we? You follow suggestions
soeasily. What is there to say?”
Again she shook her head. “Maybe; but I’m afraid it isn’t right.
You don’t scold enough. And when a teacher doesn’t scold enough
his pupils do very badly.”
It was so with Emilio de Gogorza, too. ‘What would you have me
do?” All the really great were like that, admitting in their well-
proportioned modesty that they knew their own business, but also
that others knew theirs.
Quite different, however, were a few artists whose temperament
No. 158] A Broadcasting Studio 671
exceeded their ability—that ’cellist, for instance, who refused to play
on carpet and sent us hustling through the studios for an empty cigar
box on which to rest the ’cello point. A certain vice-president doesn’t
yet know how his choice cigars came to be dumped all over his
desk eiei
There was an artist, too, who was troublesome, though not in the
studio. After the rehearsals he went out, as he said, to get something
toeat. Then later he telephoned that he was sick and couldn’t appear;
yet someone connected with the staff saw him that evening enjoying
himself in a café on upper Broadway. The truth was that he was
almost paralyzed with stage fright; no illness that you can find in a
medical dictionary had hit him— just “‘mike fever ”—the fear of that
little instrument of wires and springs.
It wasn’t nervousness that afflicted Will Rogers so much as the lack
of an audience, at least of one that could be seen. It seemed to worry
him, facing that dead wall near which the microphone stood. As he
went on, I noticed him turning around again and again to look in-
quiringly at me. And suddenly it struck me what was the matter—
the typical actor’s need of audible applause, at least of response he
could sense and feel. Leaving my seat in the monitor’s booth, from
which I had been observing him, I came out and sat on the edge of
the table not far from the “mike,” and smiled or grinned at each thing
he said. From that time on he did not turn around; he had that
response which the actor always needs. .
Of all those we assisted, Lloyd George, perhaps, caused us the
greatest worry, though innocently enough. Engrossed in his speech
and gathering fire and speed as he went, he just wouldn’t stand, as,
say, President Coolidge does, within reasonable reach of the micro-
phone. He stamped up and down the platform, now speaking to the
boxes, then to this side of the audience, then to that, and sometimes
to those on the stage behind him. One such experience taught us a
lesson, and for his second speech, at the Metropolitan Opera House,
we came forearmed, stationing a microphone at almost every three
feet of the platform to allow for his marathon. .. .
There are many things, however, that make up for the all worries
and troubles with our artists. It is a privilege to become acquainted
with them; and, it must be remembered, that, once in action, all these
great personalities we have just been chatting about lost all their
672 Science and Invention [1926
nervousness. Their power and the reasons for their success were then
abundantly evident to any observer.
Graham McNamee, You're on the Air (New York, Harpers, 1926), 96-113 passim.
159. The Telephone Idea (1926)
BY ARTHUR POUND
Pound has been an editorial writer for various newspapers, and later an editor
of The Independent—Catherine Mackenzie, in Alexander Graham Bell, tells some-
thing of the degree to which the inventor of the telephone envisioned its potentiali-
ties.
E have seen, each with his or her own eyes, but perhaps with-
out reflecting upon its social consequences, the growth of
quick communication through some part of the fifty years since Bell
invented the telephone. We have witnessed this country of magnif-
icent distances gradually binding itself together, dwelling with dwell-
ing, town with country, village with city, across the whole area served
by the exchanges and long lines of the connected companies. We
who are still young have beheld millions of farm families emerge from
isolation, the tucked away mountain hamlet and prairie village
brought into touch with the busy currents of trade and social inter-
course. Many new tools and systems originated by science and organ-
ized by business have contributed to this result; but the telephone
has done as much as any other factor to make America strong and
united; and, what is even more important, to make America aware of
her strength and unity. One can note this tying-in of interests and
sentiments in almost any corner of the vast panorama of America.
The countryside where I live, one of the fust areas colonized, is
dotted thickly with small villages and hamlets. Once they had no
communications swifter than horse and foot; now, each is in con-
tinuous touch with the other and with the metropolis of the district.
Each used to be self-sufficient, a Jack-of-all-Trades village, where
practically all the necessities of life were made in crude, laborious
ways by men and women held there by the sheer difficulty of getting
away. Now, over this whole district, labor is fluid; village carpenters
No. 159] The Telephone idea 673
and mechanics follow their jobs over a wide range and motor home at
night. Men come from the cities to work in the villages, and from the
villages to work in the city. The result, economically, is a more
efficient distribution of labor power, less unemployment, greater wealth
production. City delivery wagons frequent country roads; the mer-
chandising of many essentials of village and rural life proceeds from
a center, with many incidental economies and satisfactions. If the
villages tend to become satellites of the cities in the process, I can see
no possible harm in that great enough to offset the compensating
advantages. Both cities and villages are of value only as they provide
shelter and opportunity for human beings, and if the inhabitants of
both win through the setting up of closer relationships, why quibble
over local jealousies? If the villages lose trade in certain lines to the
city, they gain in other lines, through the expanding wants of the
old settlers and the advent of new residents. The functions of both
city and countryside, of villages and farms change somewhat in this
readjustment; but the net result seems to me economically and socially
good. In estimating these trends fairly, we must put littleness from
our minds and consider, instead, the well-being of the masses and the
general effectiveness of the nation.
Not the least of the telephone’s influence on our times has been
to give managers wider scope for their undertakings. Just as the huge
modern office building, with tens of thousands of occupants by day
and only scores of occupants at night, or the equally imposing modern
apartment house which gains population while the office building is
losing it, would be impossible places for work or residence without
telephone service, so it is difficult to picture a large industrial enter-
prise of the present functioning without means of vocal communica-
tion.
In New York City sits the president of a corporation engaged in
making quantities of highly intricate goods, perhaps the most intricate
goods manufactured in quantity and distributed to the general public
—automobiles. The long lines system puts his desk on Broadway
into prompt communication with the company’s plants in a dozen
states. He can talk to a factory manager in Michigan as easily as
he can talk to his secretary in the next room. If he desires to talk
directly to any foreman in company employ, the connection can be
established during the time I have been writing this paragraph;
674 Science and Invention [1926
thousands of telephone stations, in hundreds of separate buildings,
are at the disposal of this executive. His personal touch carries, in
the twinkling of an eye, across tremendous areas; he can gather in-
formation, give orders and hold others responsible man to man, voice
to voice. And this corporation’s entire telephone equipment, of
course, is interconnected, so that any plant can talk directly with
any other plant, and within each plant every key man has a telephone
at his elbow. Back and forth across this corporate web fly endlessly
the messages which direct capital and labor in the production and
marketing of automobiles. Furthermore, this web of corporate com-
munications is tied into a far greater whole; the corporation can reach
out, as it were, almost instantly, to its banks, agents, dealers, supply
firms and customers. Probably this executive soon will be talking
in the same easy fashion to his London agents.
A single unit in this vast manufacturing system may comprise a
hundred buildings scattered over two hundred acres. It would take
a week to explore the area thoroughly on foot. (Communicating the
information necessary to effective production in such a plant would
be immensely more difficult if the telephone were crossed off the slate.
Other systems of interplant and interoffice communication could be
arranged, no doubt, but none of them would combine the telephone’s
speed with the telephone’s simplicity of operation, whereby every
employee becomes, or at least can become at need, part of the com-
munication’s circle. From the standpoint of works management, the
telephone has become indispensable to a degree that suggests that
industrial expansion to the present extent, if it could have come about
at all without the telephone, would have resulted in plant arrange-
ments far different than those existing today. In that case street
layouts, street car lines and city maps, the geographical settings which
condition millions of lives, would be quite otherwise than they are.
One reason big business is big is because modern communications
permit growth. The keen, aggressive manager can extend his control
of men and things further than his predecessors could. Business enter-
prises expand as improved communications broaden the market into
which trade may be effectively pushed.
Another reason big business is big is because consumers are becorning
more alike in their tastes, and hence buy standardized goods in larger
quantities. Advertising hastens this standardization of wants, but
No. 159] The Telephone Idea 675
even without advertising there would be a general drift in that direc-
tion, owing to the tendency of a nation with free trade, rapid transport
and quick communications to slough off its sectional peculiarities
and to reduce itself to a more distinct national type. In this process
the telephone, along with many other factors, plays its part. The
telephone stimulates trade by making buying and selling more con-
venient; in addition, it furnishes a medium for an incalculable but
staggeringly large amount of mouth-to-mouth advertising, assuredly
the most effective of all want-stimulants.
All business, big and little, uses the telephone to good purpose.
Day after day for many years Bell’s invention has been saving the
time of more and more millions. The tremendous growth in the na-
tional wealth, which has been a striking feature of the last half century,
could not have occurred if processes had remained stationary. Wages
have been raised, hours shortened, and the standard of living raised
because many time saving systems and machines rade those advances
economically possible. The most extensive free trade area on earth,
equipped with a network of superior communications, has been
buying the output of plants constantly improving in efficiency—result,
a trade so vast and an increase in wealth so prodigious that Europeans
accustomed to another scale of values stand astonished at our statistics
of production and consumption.
There remains to be considered the fact that communications have
leaped ahead so swiftly that a comfortable margin of safety now exists
between practice and possibility. American business has not reached,
or even approached, the economic limits of safety, when all the new
factors in communications are considered. The United States is,
indeed, a land of ample margins in coal, food and natural resources
of many sorts, but the available margin in communications is wider
still, thanks to the alertness of communications engineers and the
taut efficiency of communications organizations.
American telephone methods, transplanted to France in 1917,
achieved remarkable results over hastily built lines, some of which
even had to be improvised from unfamiliar and below standard equip-
ment. Certain innovations, tested overseas, have since become stand-
ard practice at home after being refined to meet the needs of peaceful
traffic. Since the war, also, an accelerated construction program has
more than offset the lag resulting from the necessarily reduced pro-
676 Science and Invention [1926
grams of 1917-18. These two factors create an impressive margin
of safety, indicating that the expansion of American trade and com-
merce is not likely to be slowed down by congestion in wire communica-
tions.
Certainly this expansion can never be halted as long as the telephone
business continues to build for the future. No single year in the fifty
of telephone history has recorded a shrinkage in telephone use.
Telephones in the United States have multiplied from Bell’s lone in-
strument to more than 17,000,000, or one to every seven persons in
the United States; and the average number of telephone conversa-
tions daily has risen from less than 8,000,000 in 1900 to 70,000,000 in
1926. Nevertheless, there is no saturation point in sight; the public
appetite for telephone service grows with every extension and im-
provement of that service. Apparently, the telephone industry is
destined to grow as long as the United States grows; certainly it will
continue to grow as long as individuals and groups through improved
communications find it possible to increase production and sales,
leisure and wages, profits and the pleasantries of life.
Arthur Pound, Of Mills and Markets, in The Telephone Idea (New York, Green-
berg, 1926), 40-46. Copyright by the author.
CHAPTER XXIX— RECREATION AND. TRAVEL
160. Complexities of Hotel Operation (1903)
BY ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE
Paine is famous as the biographer of several eminent Americans. Hotels have
become even more elaborate since 1903, until they are incomplete without such ul-
tra-modern services as radio entertainment in each room, libraries, gymnasia and
swimming pools for the use of guests. Only by watching hotel advertisements in
Susie periodicals is it possible to keep abreast of contemporary innovations in
uxury.
MONG all our institutions of progress there is none more amaz-
ing than the modern hotel in immensity, in complex activities,
in social significance. With a width of 200 feet and a length of nearly
400 feet, and approximately 300 feet in height—these are the dimen-
sions of one of these great machines for convenient living, while within
its vast walls are more than a thousand rooms—its capacity is more
than twelve hundred guests per day, and it employs eighteen hundred
servants to attend to their needs.
In a sub-basement, forty-two and one-half feet below the street
level, is the motive power of this vast machine. Here is one of the
largest private electric plants in the world. Its power drives the screws
of nineteen elevators and supplies the illuminating energy of twenty-
five thousand electric lights. One hundred and fifty men are employed
in these power rooms, though the seven great boilers are self-stoking,
and one hundred tons of coal a day are supplied to them in seven
automatic and never-ending streams. In the sub-base basement,
too, is the private ice-machine, which freezes fifty tons of ice and forty
dozen carafes of drinking water daily, besides refrigerating the four
thousand pounds of meat, fish and game necessary to feed the huge
and gorgeous army of guests and servitors above stairs. It requires
six skilled butchers to handle this meat item, and five men are em-
ployed to open the twelve barrels of oysters that are served daily.
These things are bought in open market by men whose sole business
677
678 Recreation and Travel [1903
it is to buy well at whatever price is necessary to secure the quality
desired.
The kitchen arrangements of the “modern hotel” are on the first
basement floor. I think I had a very dim idea about such things until
we went there. I believe I pictured to myself a properly attired chef
with several assistants before a rather large kitchen range and in a
good deal of a hurry during the rush hours, perhaps forgetting his
pan of hot rolls in the oven now and then, or letting the eggs get over-
done.
My mental picture was not a good one. There is a chef, to be sure,
but so far as I could see he does not cook. He is simply a captain of
the seventy-five other cooks who work in three relays of twenty-five
each. There is no range, but a solid bank of broilers—immense grid-
irons, beneath which are the fires that never die. As for the four
hundred loaves of bread and eight thousand rolls required daily, the
chef does not worry his mind over the patent cutters and mixers and
ovens and staff of bakers needed to supply the simple item of bread; or
concern himself with the quality of the eleven hundred pounds of
butter that are each day required to go with it. Neither does he
trouble himself with the pastry, where marvelous things are con-
structed of candies and creams and fruits—works of art, some of them
entitled to “honorable mention” in an academy of design. The
patrons of the modern hotel are fond of deserts, and the daily item
of two hundred and fifty large pies convinces me that a fair percentage
of them are native born.
I must not forget the item of eggs. Eighteen thousand are required
every twenty-four hours. Boiled eggs do not get overdone; they are
boiled by clock-work. A perforated dipper containing the eggs drops
down into boiling water. The dipper’s clock-work is set to the second,
and when that final second has expired the little dipper jumps up out
of the water and the eggs are ready for delivery. There are men who
do nothing else but fill and watch and empty these dancing dippers,
and it seemed to me great fun.
On another part of this floor is the dish-washing, where great
galvanized baskets lower the pieces into various solutions of potash
and clean rinsing water—all so burning hot that the dishes dry in-
stantly without wiping. Sixty-five thousand pieces of chinaware are
cleansed in a day, and an almost equal quantity of silver. All told,
No. 160] Complexities of Hotel Operation 679
there are three hundred employees in the kitchen departments of this
huge living machine.
On another part of the first basement floor is the laundry. Every
day is washday in the modern hotel. Eleven great revolving washers
are here, four centrifugal dryers, almost exactly like the centrifugal
bleachers in a sugar refinery, and six ten-foot mangles that take in a
full-width sheet, smoothing as well as drying it. But the ironing of
shirts and collars is done in the good old-fashioned way—by hand,
only that the irons are always hot, for they are electric irons, and a
perfect evenness of temperature is maintained. They are handled by
a staff of sturdy-armed men and women, and an ironer’s wages are
considered good... .
There are four dining-rooms and two cafés upstairs, and perhaps a
thousand people are being served at one time. They are the most
brilliantly dressed, best groomed people in the world. They are also
thewichésterc mi
Besides dining-rooms and cafés on the first floor, there are splendid
foyers, or rest rooms, fitted with every luxury in the shape of easy
chairs, divans and desks, though perhaps the most striking feature of
this mezzanine floor of the modern hotel may be its wonderful cor-
ridors running its length and breadth, luxuriously seated and carpeted
throughout, including a gorgeous avenue of Oriental fabrics, lapis
lazuli and gold. Then there are the luxurious Turkish smoking-
parlor, the ample reading-rooms, and the vast billiard parlors.
The splendid office of the modern hotel is in the centre of this floor.
Here is a force of men, trained for a special service, each with his
knowledge and his ability ready for instant use, each with a judgment
of men and conditions and emergencies that enables him to decide
whether a case presented is a matter for instant action or for man-
agerial consideration. At one corner of the office is a young man whose
only duty is to supply information and guides to visitors. . . .
Near the office there is a battery of pneumatic tubes connecting
with the upper floors. A bell-boy no longer carries up a visitor’s card.
The card is put into an air-cartridge and is fired straight to the floor
where it belongs. An attendant at a little desk there sends it to the
proper room. By and by the cartridge goes back to the office, and the
visitor learns whether the guest he wishes to see is in his room, whether
he will see him and if not, why, or, perhaps, when.
680 Recreation and Travel [1903
. . . The ballroom is used for dramatic performances and for balls
and other social events. A card-party had just ended when I went
through, and a bushel of playing-cards, once used and thrown away,
were flung into the corner. Everything is luxurious, lavish and prodi-
gal in the modern hotel.
There are five splendid banquet and reception rooms in all, and
they are rarely unoccupied. Lectures, readings, musicales, grand
opera performances, art auctions, mighty social affairs, that fill cor-
ridors and stairways with a dazzling and humming overflow—there
is no end to these things. Night is like day, only, if anything, more
brilliant. Even the casual visitor feels somehow caught in an endless
whirl of gaiety and recalls certain old allegorical pictures wherein the
festivities of life were meant to be thrown in high relief. . . .
It is said that a guest may spend a profitable week in the hotel
without once going on the street. Entertainments are on every hand,
businesses of almost every sort are represented on the ground floor,
and when at a loss for other amusement the visitor may ascend to the
fifteenth floor and sit for his photograph, or spend an hour in a gay
roof-garden. .
The hotel dweller’s problem is to furnish the money—the rest is
easy. It is true that there may be a certain lack of individuality in
his home life, and he must put up with rather narrow quarters as
compared to what he might have in his own household. But he has
many advantages. His meals are always ready. His servants are
always at hand. He has a telephone in his room that connects not
only with the office but with the systems of the outer world. Heisa
living embodiment of human irresponsibilities. . . .
Albert Bigelow Paine, The Workings of a Modern Hotel, in World’s Work, March,
1903 (New York), V, 3171-3187 passim.
No. 161] Our Great American Game 681
161. Our Great Ame ican Game (1906)
BY DOCTOR J. P CASEY
Dr. Casey equipped himself for the two pr -fessions of baseball and dentistry. He
gives a graphic description of a thrilling game, and explains something of the tre-
mendous popular appeal of baseball. For an excellent account of sports in America,
see Rollin Lynde Hartt, People at Play.
HERE’S no delay in a game of baseball. Its march is
inevitable. A man’s stay at the bat is limited. He can
receive only five balls from the pitcher (not counting fouls) before the
arrival of his batting crisis. If the sixth ball comes straight and
he misses it, off goes his head; he’s out and another reigns in his
stead), tat
And what a game it is to watch! There’s work for two or three
pairs of the sharpest eyes to see all that is going on. There’s the man
that is trying to steal from first base to second, lying far out from first
base. with a spring in his body like a hickory bow, ready to dart for
second base and hurtle thru dust to immortal glory if he sees the
smallest sign of weakening in catcher or pitcher. He is hravs, but nor
rash; he is far out, but not too far; for the pitcher is watching him
with half an eye and stands ready to launch a Jovian thunderbolt
that will dash him to pieces if he is off base.
Tense thousands watch. The fate of empires hangs on Kelly’s
slide.
But this is only one little detail. At the same time there is to be
seen the great battle between pitcher and batter and also the runne
trying to steal home from third base. A good game is a three-ringed
circus with a tingle of excitement for every moment. When a base
hit is made, with two men on bases in a close game, lightning looks
slow and poky in comparison with the way things happen out on the
diamond; the ball sizzles about, burning the air, the men on the field
dart like streaks, while on the stands twenty thousand madmen wor-
ship their gods with a great outcry.
Such is baseball, our baseball! A game that clutches spectators
and squeezes them till they yell; a game that makes centenarians
dance and howl and throw peanut shells at the umpire. There’s
nothing like it in the way of games. Maybe the Spanish bull-fight
682 Recreation and Travel [1906
comes next—when you get the real thing. But even in that there’s
only one thing to watch—the bull—and he isn’t working all the time.
We’d have to go back to Nero’s times, when Rome flowed into the
Coliseum, sixty thousand strong, to watch the gladiators and the
beasts, in order to match the excitement of a first-class game of ball.
Take that triple play made by our boys in Cincinnati recently.
It was the sixth inning and the score was a tie. Cincinnati was at the
bat, with nobody out, a man on first base and another on second.
Kelly, the batsman, hits the ball to Alperman, who throws to Lewis,
on second base, Lewis returns the ball to first base, Hummell, who
throws it to Bergen, the catcher, just in time to catch Huggins, at
the end of a desperate slide. There was action—three men out—in an
eye-winking—a perfect triple play by our boys, a thing only seen once
in five years or more... .
When American baseball was first played in England—thirty years
ago—the only extraordinary thing the Englishmen saw in it was the
sliding. They were willing to admit that that was wonderful; the
Prince of Wales, who is now King, was especially interested, tho I
doubt that he ever tried it. . . .
Sometimes an outfielder chasing a high fly that is going over his
head runs forty yards and reaching out his hands catches the ball
with his back turned to the direction from which it came. It is not
uncommon to see a fielder run a hundred feet, launch himself like a
spear along the ground with one hand far outstretched and seize the
ball, that has come a hundred and fifty yards, before it can touch the
earth.
There is great science in throwing in from the outfield, because of
the force and accuracy necessary; there is science in base-running and
sliding. The “hook slide,” for instance, where a man comes to the
home plate on his hip, presenting only his foot for the possible touch
of the ball in the catcher’s hands—that is a work of thought and
erudition.
But baseball science reaches its climax in the pitching. There’s
nothing in any other game comparable with the wonders accomplished
there. The pitcher takes a sphere, makes it travel in a right line for
fifty feet and then make a violent curve outward or inward, according
to the twist he puts upon it. This is the thing that the scientists
declared to be impossible, because of the nature of the sphere and the
No. 161] Our Great American Game 683
constitution of the air. Yet the pitchers are doing it every day, with
every ball they deliver, and the scientists have to guess again.
From the pitcher’s box to the batter’s stand is sixty feet; the pitcher
can send the ball so that it travels fifty-seven feet straight, then shoots
aside or drops at so sharp an angle that in the remaining three feet
it drops or turns aside two feet.
. . . The players number millions, when all the schoolboys, little
and big, are counted in, and even if all except the professional and
semi-professional are excluded from the reckoning there is still a great
army left... Ii,
Players come into the big leagues after a long, hard apprenticeship.
All the way from the schoolboy at the bottom to the expert at the
top the process of elimination is going on—the struggle for the sur-
vival of the fittest. It is probable that 500,000 boys today have the
ambition to rise to the top in professional baseball and blaze upon the
world another Rusie or Roger Conner, “ Buck” Ewing or Pop Anson.
Some lose the notion at sight of higher prizes, some weaken and are
found wanting; only a few get thru and they are the pick of the
pekim
Some men like Pop Anson, of the Chicago team, can stay at the top
in baseball for twenty years. I’ve been a professional ball player for
fifteen years, tho I’m a doctor of dentistry. Daly has been a long time
in the big leagues; Pat Donovan has been at the top for fifteen years;
Clark Griffith, the pitcher, twelve or fourteen years, and many others
from ten to twenty years.
But when the old ball player has done with the game that does not
mean that he has done with the world. When I have fielded my last
ball I will practice dentistry.
The old players who have long retired are in all sorts of business.
Some are lawyers, like Johnny Ward and Dave Fultz; some physi-
cians, like Dr. Gunning; Amos Rusie is working in a lumber yard in
Vincennes, Indiana; Mike Sullivan was on the Governor’s staff in
Boston till he died; Charley Ganzell, the Boston’s old catcher, is a
traveling salesman; Jim O’Rourke, formerly of the New Yorks, is
playing ball today. He owns his own club and grounds, and has a son
playing on the same team with him—Connecticut State League.
Roger Conner, the New York’s old catcher, is a large property owner
in Cincinnati; “Buck” Ewing is in business in Cincinnati. People
684 Recreation and Travel [r912
who remember Arlie Latham will be glad to learn his fate. Arlie was
one of the greatest kickers ever seen, the leader of riots and plague
of umpires. So they’ve made him an umpire, and crowds daily heap
contumely upon him.
I think interest in baseball is going up. We get crowds of 25,000
on great occasions, tho the crowds are limited by the fact that all the
seats must be back of the foul lines, while the Romans circled them all
the way round the Hippodrome.
And it is a good thing for the country that baseball has such a grip.
Its influence is all for good. A ball player must be an athlete and an
athlete must be temperate.
J. P. Casey, in The Independent (August 16, 1906), LXI, 375-378 passim.
>
162. Racing an Avalanche (1912)
BY ENOS A. MILLS
Mills was a remarkable nature writer, his field of study mainly in the West.
Similar adventures will be found related in a number of travel books.
HAD gone into the San Juan Mountains during the first week in
March to learn something of the laws which govern snow slides,
to get a fuller idea of their power and destructiveness, and also with
the hope of seeing them in wild, magnificent action. Everywhere,
except on wind-swept points, the winter’s snows lay deep. Conditions
for slide movement were so favorable it seemed probable that, during
the next few days at least, one would “run” or chute down every
gulch that led from the summit. I climbed on skees well to the top
of the range. By waiting on spurs and ridges I saw several thrilling
exhibitions.
It was an exciting experience, but at the close of one great day the
clear weather that had prevailed came to an end. From the table-
like summit I watched hundreds of splendid clouds slowly advance,
take their places, mass, and form fluffy seas in valley and canyons
just below my level. They submerged the low places in the plateau,
and torn, silver-gray masses of mists surrounded crags and headlands.
No. 162] Racing an Avalanche 685
The sunset promised to be wonderful, but suddenly the mists came
surging past my feet and threatened to shut out the view. Hurriedly
climbing a promontory, I watched from it a many-colored sunset
change and fade over mist-wreathed spires, and swelling, peak-torn
seas. But the cloud-masses were rising, and suddenly points and
peaks began to settle out of sight; then a dash of frosty mists, and my
promontory sank into the sea. The light vanished from the heights,
and I was caught in dense, frosty clouds, and winter snows without
a star.
I had left my skees at the foot of the promontory, and climbed up
by my fingers and toes over the rocks without great difficulty. But
on starting to return I could see only a few inches into the frosty,
sheep’s-wool clouds, and quickly found that trying to get down would
be a perilous pastime. The side of the promontory stood over the
steep walls of the plateau, and, not caring to be tumbled overboard
by a slip, I concluded that sunrise from this point would probably
be worth while.
It was not bitter cold, and I was comfortably dressed; however, it
was necessary to do much dancing and arm-swinging to keep warm.
Snow began to fall just after the clouds closed in, and it fell rapidly
without a pause until near morning. Early in the evening I began a
mental review of a number of subjects, mingling with these, from time
to time, vigorous practice of gymnastics or calisthenics to help pass
the night and to aid in keeping warm. The first subject I thought
through was Arctic exploration; then I recalled all that my mind had
retained of countless stories of mountain-climbing experiences; the
contents of Tyndall’s “Hours of Exercise in the Alps” was most
clearly recalled. I was enjoying the poetry of Burns, when broken
clouds and a glowing eastern sky claimed all attention until it was
light enough to get off the promontory.
Planning to go down the west side, I crossed the table-like top,
found, after many trials, a break in the enormous snow-cornice, and
started down the steep slope. It was a dangerous descent, for the
rock was steep and smooth as a wall, and was overladen with snow
which might slip at any moment. I descended slowly and with great
caution, so as not to start the snow, as well as to guard against slipping
and losing control of myself. It was like descending a mile of steep,
snow-covered barn roof,—nothing to lay hold of and omnipresent
686 Recreation and Travel [r912
opportunity for slipping. A short distance below the summit the
clouds again were around me, and I could see only a short distance.
I went sideways, with my long skees, which I had now regained, at
right angles to the slope; slowly, a few inches at a time, I eased myself
down, planting one free skee firmly before I moved the other.
At last I reached a point where the wall was sufficiently tilted to be
called a slope, though it was still too steep for safe coasting. The
clouds lifted and were floating away, while the sun made the moun-
tains of snow still whiter. I paused to look back and up, to where the
wall ended in the blue sky, and could not understand how I had come
safely down, even with the long tacks I had made, which showed
clearly up to the snow-corniced, mist-shrouded crags at the summit.
I had come down the side of a precipitous amphitheatre which rose a
thousand feet or more above me. A short distance down the mountain,
the slopes of this amphitheatre concentrated in a narrow gulch
that extended two miles or more. Altogether it was like being in an
enormous frying-pan laying face up. I was in the pan just above the
place where the gulch handle joined.
It was a bad place to get out of, and thousands of tons of snow
clinging to the steeps and sagging from corniced crests ready to slip,
plunge down, and sweep the very spot on which I stood, showed most
impressively that it was a perilous place to be in.
As I stood gazing upward and wondering how the snow ever could
have held while I came down over it, there suddenly appeared on the
upper steeps an upburst as from an explosion. Along several hundred
feet of cornice, sprays and clouds of snow dashed and filled the air.
An upward breeze curled and swept the top of this cloud over the crest
in an inverted cascade.
All this showed for a few seconds until the snowy spray began to
separate and vanish in the air. The snow-cloud settled downward
and began to roll forward. Then monsters of massed snow appeared
beneath the front of the cloud and plunged down the slopes. Wildly,
grandly they dragged the entire snow-cloud in their wake. At the
same instant the remainder of the snow-cornice was suddenly en-
veloped in another explosive snow-cloud effect.
A general slide had started. I whirled to escape, pointed my skees
down the slope, —and went. In less than half a minute a tremendous
snow avalanche, one hundred or perhaps two hundred feet deep and
No. 162] Racing an Avalanche 687
five or six hundred feet long, thundered over the spot where I had
stood.
There was no chance to dodge, no time to climb out of the way.
The only hope of escape lay in outrunning the magnificent monster.
It came crashing and thundering after me as swift as a gale and more
all-sweeping and destructive than an earthquake tidal wave.
I made a desperate start. Friction almost ceases to be a factor
with skees on a snowy steep, and in less than a hundred yards I was
going like the wind. For the first quarter of a mile, to the upper end
of the gulch, was smooth coasting, and down this I shot, with. the
avalanche, comet-tailed with snow-dust in, close pursuit. A race for
life was on.
The gulch down which I must go began with a rocky gorge and
continued downward, an enormous U-shaped depression between high
mountain-ridges. Here and there it expanded and then contracted,
and it was broken with granite crags and ribs. It was piled and bris-
tled with ten thousand fire-killed trees. To coast through all these
snow-clad obstructions at breakneck speed would be taking the maxi-
mum number of life-and-death chances in the minimum amount of
time. The worst of it all was that I had never been through the place.
And bad enough, too, was the fact that a ridge thrust in from the left
and completely hid the beginning of the gulch.
As I shot across the lower point of the ridge, about to plunge blindly
into the gorge, I thought of the possibility of becoming entangled in
the hedge-like thickets of dwarfed, gnarled timberline trees. I also
realized that I might dash against a cliff or plunge into a deep canyon.
Of course I might strike an open way, but certain it was that I could
not stop, nor see the beginning of the gorge, nor tell what I should
strike when I shot over the ridge.
It was a second of most intense concern as I cleared the ridge blindly
to go into what lay below and beyond. It was like leaping into the
dark, and with the leap turning on the all-revealing light. As I
cleared the ridge, there was just time to pull myself together for a
forty-odd-foot leap across one arm of the horseshoe-shaped end of the
gorge. In all my wild mountainside coasts on skees, never have I
sped as swiftly as when I made this mad flight. As I shot through the
air, I had a glimpse down into the pointed, snow-laden tops of a few
tall fir trees that were firmly rooted among the rocks in the bottom
688 Recreation and Travel [r912
of the gorge. Luckily I cleared the gorge and landed in a good place;
but so narrowly did I miss the corner of a cliff that my shadow collided
with it.
There was no time to bid farewell to fears when the slide started,
nor to entertain them while running away from it. Instinct put me
to flight; the situation set my wits working at their best, and, once
started, I could neither stop nor look back; and so thick and fast did
obstructions and dangers rise before me that only dimly and inci-
dentally did I think of the oncoming danger behind.
I came down on the farther side of the gorge, to glance forward like
an arrow. There was only an instant to shape my course and direct
my flight across the second arm of the gorge, over which I leaped from
a high place, sailing far above the snow-mantled trees and boulders
in the bottom. My senses were keenly alert, and I remember noticing
the shadows of the fir trees on the white snow and hearing while still
in the air the brave, cheery notes of a chickadee; then the snowslide
on my trail, less than an eighth of a mile behind, plunged into the
gorge with a thundering crash. I came back to the snow on the lower
side, and went skimming down the slope with the slide only a few
seconds behind.
Fortunately most of the fallen masses of trees were buried, though
a few broken limbs peeped through the snow to snag or trip me. How
I ever dodged my way through the thickly standing tree growths
is one feature of the experience that was too swift for recollection.
Numerous factors presented themselves which should have done much
to dispel mental procrastination and develop decision. There were
scores of progressive propositions to decide within a few seconds;
should I dodge that tree on the left side and duck under low limbs
just beyond, or dodge to the right and scrape that pile of rocks? These,
with my speed, required instant decision and action.
With almost uncontrollable rapidity I shot out into a small, nearly
level glacier meadow, and had a brief rest from swift decisions and
oncoming dangers. How relieved my weary brain felt, with nothing
to decide about dodging! As though starved for thought material,
I wondered if there were willows buried beneath the snow. Sharp
pains in my left hand compelled attention, and showed my left arm
drawn tightly against my breast, with fingers and thumb spread to
the fullest, and all their muscles tense.
No. 162] Racing an Avalanche 689
The lower edge of the meadow was almost blockaded with a dense
growth of fire-killed trees. Fortunately the easy slope here had so
checked my speed that I was able to dodge safely through, but the
heavy slide swept across the meadow after me with undiminished
speed, and came crashing into the dead trees so close to me that
broken limbs were flung flying past as I shot down off a steep moraine
less than one hundred feet ahead.
All the way down I had hoped to find a side canyon into which I
might dodge. I was going too rapidly to enter the one I had seen.
As I coasted off the moraine it flashed through my mind that I had
once heard a prospector say it was only a quarter of a mile from Aspen
Gulch up to the meadows. Aspen Gulch came in on the right, as the
now widening track seemed to indicate.
At the bottom of the moraine I was forced between two trees that
stood close together, and a broken limb of one pierced my open coat
just beneath the left armhole, and slit the coat to the bottom. My
momentum and the resistance of the strong material gave me such a
shock that I was flung off my balance, and my left skee smashed
against a tree. Two feet of the heel was broken off and the remainder
split. I managed to avoid falling, but had to check my speed with
my staff for fear of a worse accident.
Battling breakers with a broken oar or racing with a broken skee
are struggles of short duration. The slide did not slow down, and so
closely did it crowd me that, through the crashing of trees as it struck
them down, I could hear the rocks and splintered timbers in its mass
grinding together and thudding gainst obstructions over which it
swept. These sounds, and flying, broken limbs cried to me “Faster!”
and as I started to descend another steep moraine, I threw away my
staff and “let go.” I simply flashed down the slope, dodged and
rounded a cliff, turned awkwardly into Aspen Gulch, and tumbled
heels over head—into safety.
Then I picked myself up, to see the slide go by within twenty feet,
with great broken trees sticking out of its side, and a snow-cloud
dragging above.
Enos A. Mills, The Spell of the Rockies (Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1912),
3-14 passim. Reprinted by special permission of the publishers.
690 Recreation and Travel [1917
163. Waters of the Yosemite (1917)
BY EX-PRESIDENT CAROLINE HAZARD
Miss Hazard was President of Wellesley College from 1899 to 1910. On the na-
tional parks, see publications of the National Park Service and Geological Survey.
I
UCH a stupendous leap! The mighty stream
Aghast with that achievement staggers in distress,
Becomes a shadowy thing of dream
Upon the brink of nothingness.
Some giant archipelago of air
Obtruding from the clouds descends.
With wavering outline, and a flare
Of iridescent color, trembles, blends,
Discloses dewy slopes, Titania’s emerald grass,
Chasm and precipice Behemoth could not pass.
Rolling empurpled on the cloudless day
Tumultuous reveller, foaming, seething
With billows pearly as the driven spray
Of ocean wave, subsiding, heaving,
It floats between the earth and sky,
For sky too low, for earth too high,
A marvel and a wonder
Of color and of thunder
Il
For it has life of sound.
The strong vibrations of the primal note
That shakes the solid ground,
That finds its echo in the song-bird’s throat,
That shapes the life of man—
Reverberations shouting to the spheres
Atune with Saturn, and the Milky Way,
The sound that o’er creation ran
The gamut of its loves and fears
Night and day
No. 163]
Waters of the Yosemite
Roars and riots in the ears
A deafening, stunning buffet of noise,
A strong, tumultuous draft of joys,
With rhythmic rise and fall,
A bugle call
That stoops to a caress
Of tenderness.
II
Blue and pink and amethyst
The sun-transfigured mist
Drop by drop is reassembled, caught
Upon the giant crags. The thing of dream
Is still of crystal beauty, taught
Once more the use of earth; a limpid stream
Rolls through lush meadows, emerald green,
Green as the moon in Oriental night,
Blooming with flowers, starry bright,
The heaven above transposed, unrolled
For that clear stream to water, to enfold
With all the beauty it could glean
From that stupendous flight
From out the quiver
Of God’s delight
To be a river.
09I
Caroline Hazard, The Yosemite and Other Verse (Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co.,
1917), 7-10.
Reprinted by permission of the author.
692 Recreation and Travel [1926
164. On Moving Pictures (1926)
BY MICHAEL GROSS AND “P. W.”
On the source of these poems, see note to No. 151 above. They satirize a favorite
subject of the news reels, and the flowery and melodramatic language of the moving
picture sub-titles, becoming rarer with the advent of talking pictures.
A. A BALLADE OF THE News REEL STANDBY
RAINS catch fire in head-on crash;
Earthquake buries town from view;
Steeple falls at lightning flash;
Cat greets hen, who calls to woo.
Prince bids old New York adieu;
Holland Town has jubilee;
Then, as sure as two and two—
Fighting fleet puts out to sea.
Thousands cheer as net stars clash;
Boat leaves port with one-man crew;
Planes all set for polar dash;
Dress styles on Fifth Avenue.
Horse enjoys tobacco chew;
Mayor hears the Girl Scouts’ plea;
Then, Good Lord! It can’t be true—
Fighting fleet puts out to sea.
Fast side kids enjoy a splash;
Lion leaves cage as cops pursue;
Guards protect ten million cash;
Burbank shows how yenhocks grew;
Mouse brought up on kidney stew;
Jersey girl gives birth to three;
Just a moment! They’re not through—
Fighting fleet puts out to sea.
No. 164]
On Moving Pictures
L'ENVOI
Prince! It mustn’t all be new;
Alter one detail; ’twill do;
Please omit, if just for me,
“Fighting fleet puts out to sea.”
693
MICHAEL GROSS
B. Ir tHe Movie WRITERS TAKE up POETRY
Athwart the rock-girt isle of life
Hate, like a lusty fungus, spread
To burgeon forth revenge and strife
And raise up passion’s flaming head.
Atop the gleaming hills the sun,
Blest heavenly orb of warmth and light,
Recks not that foulest deeds are done
Beneath its iridescence bright.
Hard by a peaceful verdant vale,
Afar from strife and war’s alarms,
The little town of Lilydale
Nestled like a babe in arms.
And yet beside its purling streams
Men dwelt whose passions oft ran hot,
Disturbing peaceful holy dreams
Of others who dwelt near the spot.
John Vedder (played by Colwell Sward)
Weaves most dishonest plots to gain
The fortune of May Gloam, his ward
(Played by Minerva Fenton Fane).
Tense and distressed Van Diemen stands
(Van Diemen—Oswald Chester Blake),
Imprinting kisses on May’s hands
As though love’s frenzied thirst to slake.
694 Recreation and Travel [1926
Anon Vanilla Rinderpest
(Played by Elaine Mimosa Krell)
Withdraws the papers from her breast
As Vedder loudly hisses: “Hell!”
And in the village church we see
Those twain made one as Fate foretold—
The maid as virtuous as can be,
The lad of brawn with heart of gold.
The villain’s foiled; life’s gall he tastes;
Defeat has stalked the things he prized:
Crime’s banished to the desert wastes
While love’s dear dream is reaiized.
P. W.
Contributions to The New York World, collected in Franklin P. Adams, The
Second Conning Tower Book (New York, Macy-Masius, 1927), 73-74, 127-128.
LACTEX
THE WORLD WAR
CHARTER ANA MEE UNITED STATES
AS A NEUTRAL
165. The United States as a Neutral (1914)
BY PROFESSOR CHARLES CHENEY HYDE
Hyde has been in the service of the State Department, and is now Professor of
International Law and Diplomacy in Columbia University. This article summa-
rizes some of the burdens of neutrality in war time.
PON the outbreak of the European war the United States
finds itself placed in a new relation to each belligerent Power,
and suddenly subjected to a variety of duties, and possessed of certain
rights that accrue only in such abnormal times. With a merchant
marine shrunken to insignificance, with a vast export trade threatened
with paralysis by the lack of neutral bottoms, and with American
citizens stranded by tens of thousands on European soil, we neverthe-
less face a situation that Washington would have rejoiced to substitute
for that which confronted him in 1793, for to-day the United States
as a neutral enjoys rights that were not dreamed of at the close of the
eighteenth century; and those rights are in large degree codified.
To The Hague Conventions of 1907, concerning the rights and duties
of neutral powers in naval war, and the rights and duties of neutral
powers and persons in case of war on land, the United States is, hap-
pily, a party. It has also accepted the Declaration of London of 1909,
concerning the laws of naval war. The purpose of that agreement
was to make clear the law to be applied by the proposed International
Prize Court, the arrangement for the establishment of which was
695
696 The United States as a Neutral [ror4
formulated at The Hague in 1907. Though the powers have not es-
tablished the Prize Court or accepted generally the Declaration of
London, the United States has formally ratified both agreements.
By so doing it has recorded its approval of the rules enunciated in the
latter document. It cannot, therefore, complain of the conduct of any
belligerent which may seek to conform to or rely upon them. Although
the Parliament of Great Britain has acted adversely upon the Declara-
tion of London, that country is, nevertheless, free to change its posi-
tion and to make that arrangement the guide of its own prize courts.
Deriving their law from that source, their decisions cannot be de-
nounced by us as unjust. For these several codifications the United
States has had to pay a price the extent of which is hardly yet appre-
ciated. However useful may be the knowledge at the very commence-
ment of hostilities of what a neutral may reasonably expect, the rules
themselves are in certain respects so adverse to interests of such a state
that it is only through the grim experience of a general European war
that the United States can fairly estimate how well it has conserved
its vital interests in accepting as law principles that may be relentlessly
applied.
According to the Hague Conventions, the United States as a gov-
ernment is obliged to refrain from taking any part in the war. Im-
partial participation does not suffice. We could not excuse the sale
of arms to Germany by pleading readiness to supply likewise France
or Russia. The scope of the duty of abstention is broad. The govern-
ment must not furnish a belligerent with anything that will serve to
increase its fighting power, such as ammunition or other war material,
or warships. Incidental to this general duty to abstain from participa-
tion, the neutral finds itself burdened with a still more onerous duty to
prevent its territory and resources from being employed to strengthen
the military or naval power of a belligerent. The diligence required
of a neutral is measured by the “means at its disposal.” Those means
must be used to prevent the commission of war-like acts within its
waters, or the passage of belligerent troops over its territory. The
neutral is obviously not responsible for what it is powerless to prevent.
From the rules of the Treaty of Washington of 1871, which made
possible the Geneva Arbitration of the so-called Alabama Claims, has
been derived the well-known principle expressed in happier terms in
1907, that “a neutral Government is bound to employ the means at
No. 165] The United States as a Neutral 697
its disposal to prevent the fitting out or arming of any vessel within
its jurisdiction which it has reason to believe is intended to cruise,
or engage in hostile operations, against a Power with which that
Government is at peace.” The same vigilance is required of a neutral
to prevent the departure from its territory of a vessel there adapted
entirely or partly for warlike use, and intended to cruise or engage in
hostile operations. Pursuant to this obligation the United States
has already taken extraordinary precautions to prevent the departure
from Atlantic ports of merchant vessels sailing under belligerent flags
if equipped in such a way as to fight for their own countries, and
under contract for public service in case of war. . .
Whether war is waged on land or sea, neutral territory is deemed
inviolable. As to this requirement The Hague Conventions are ex-
plicit. Acts of war in neutral waters are forbidden. Thus if the
Kronprinzessin Cecilie had been captured by any enemv cruiser just
as she entered Frenchman’s Bay on August 4th, the United States
would have had good cause to demand reparation from the govern-
ment of the captor, and would also have found itself compelled to
demand the release of the vessel. A prize court can not be set up on
neutral territory or in neutral waters. Nor can belligerent warships
make use of such waters for the purpose of increasing supplies of war
material or of completing their crews, or as a base of operations against
the enemy.
For numerous purposes a belligerent warship may endeavor to
make use of neutral waters. The Hague Convention of 1907 indicates
the scope of the privileges that such a vessel may be permitted to
enjoy, and thereby enables the neutral to follow with certainty a
course that shall not expose it to the charge of unneutral conduct.
Let us consider a situation that might arise. A French cruiser, short
of coal and provisions, and in an unseaworthy condition, is pursued
by the enemy, and puts into Portland harbor to escape capture and to
rehabilitate herself generally. Just inside of Cushing’s Island she
finds herself in the unwelcome company of a German warship that
made the same port a few hours earlier. The Hague Convention has
marked out the general course which the United States should follow;
and by his Proclamation of Neutrality, President Wilson has indicated
with precision what we would permit. Accordingly, the French ship
would be allowed fuel sufficient to enable her to reach her nearest
698 The United States as a Neutral |1914
home port, or half of that amount if she were rigged to go under sail
and also be propelled by steam. Although the United States could,
without impropriety, if it had adopted that method of determining
the amount of fuel to be supplied, allow the vessel to fill its bunkers
built to carry fuel, and thereby greatly increase her efficiency, the
President has announced a rule that is consistent with our previous
policy and in harmony with what was, prior to 1907, generally re-
garded as sound practice. The latitude accorded the neutral in 1907
was not sought by the United States, was vigorously opposed by
Great Britain, and was the result of a compromise to satisfy the far-
reaching demands of Germany. With respect to provisions, the
French ship could supply herself with garlic and Aroostook County
potatoes ad libitum, so long as the revictualing did not exceed the so-
called “peace standard.”
If it were in a seaworthy condition the German cruiser would be
obliged to depart within twenty-four hours after its arrival. The
French vessel might, however, be allowed additional time if needed
for recoaling or repairs. The latter might necessarily consume a few
days. Repairs would not be permitted that would serve to do more
than place the ship in a seaworthy condition, and even such repairs
would not be allowed if they necessitated a long sojourn. If, as in the
case of the Russian ship Lena, that entered San Francisco harbor in
September, 1904, during the Russian-Japanese war, necessary repairs
would require a stay of several weeks or months, the vessel would be
promptly interned by the United States. By interning the ship the
United States would be taking measures to render her incapable of
putting to sea during the war.
It was declared in 1907 that the citizens of a state which is not
taking part in the war are considered as neutrals. To the Americans
that are now in belligerent European countries that status is precious.
It enables the possessor to escape numerous burdens which the state
that is engaged in war justly and of necessity imposes upon its own
citizens. One cannot, however, avail himself of his neutrality if he
commits acts against a belligerent, or if he voluntarily enlists in the
ranks of a party to the conflict. There are, nevertheless, services
which the neutral citizen on belligerent soil may render without losing
his distinctive character. Americans in Paris or Berlin might, for
example, organize for the purpose of assisting in matters of police
No. 165] The United States as a Neutral 699
or civil administration. They might also furnish loans (if their means
permitted) to one of the belligerents in whose territory they did not
reside. . .
To the people of the United States as a whole the war presents no
graver aspect than in its bearing upon our right to export and trans-
port to the belligerent countries food, clothing, fuel, and other things
known as conditional contraband. To make clear the problem now
confronting us a brief explanation of the law is necessary. ‘‘Con-
traband”’ is the term employed to describe an article which is liable
to capture because of its hostile destination. Contraband is subject
to capture on a neutral vessel and is liable to condemnation. Goods
which belong to the owner of the contraband and which are on board
the same vessel are also liable to condemnation. Moreover, according
to the Declaration of London, the vessel carrying such articles may
be confiscated if the contraband forms “by value, by weight, by vol-
ume, or by freight, more than half the cargo.” Maritime states have
long been aware of the importance of the distinction between articles
adapted solely for use in war, such as guns and projectiles, and those
susceptible of use in the pursuit of peace as well as in that of war,
such as food and coal. Articles of the former class have come to be
known as absolute contraband, those of the latter as conditional
contraband. The purpose of the distinction is to limit the right to
capture articles of the latter kind to occasions when they are destined
for an essentially hostile end, and to permit the capture of those of
the former kind whenever they are bound for the territory of a state
engaged in war. In order to protect neutral commerce from inter-
ference, the United States has struggled hard for recognition of the
principle that what is capable of feeding and clothing, and otherwise
ministering to the sustenance of the people of a belligerent state,
should not be subject to capture and condemnation, unless shown to
be not only capable of use in war, but also destined for that use.
Though maritime states are not indisposed to accept this principle,
there has been diversity of opinion respecting, first, what articles
should be treated as conditional contraband, and secondly, under what
circumstances articles recognized as such should be subject to capture.
The Declaration of London appears to have solved the first difficulty
by specifying in appropriate and careful lists certain articles as abso-
lute, and others as conditional contraband (and still others as not
700 The United States as a Neutral [1914
contraband at all). Thus arms of all kinds, gun-mountings, clothing
and harness of a distinctively military character, animals suitable
for use in war, and armor-plate are among the articles placed in the
first category. They are subject to capture if destined to territory
belonging to or occupied by the enemy. This is true whether the car-
riage of the goods is direct, or entails transshipment or subsequent
transport by land. What is decisive is the destination, not of the vessel
but of the goods. Thus a consignment of uniforms, shipped from New
York on an American vessel bound for Naples or any other neutral
European port, would be subject to capture, even within sight of
Nantucket, if it were shown that the ultimate destination of the goods
was Trieste.
Articles in the second category, and described by the Declaration
of London as conditional contraband, include foodstuffs, gold and
silver, paper money, boots and shoes, vehicles, material for telephones
and telegraph, fuel, lubricants, and harness. These articles furnish
a substantial portion of the export trade of the United States.
The second difficulty already noted—concerning when conditional
contraband is subject to capture—is the all-important question before
the United States to-day. In more concrete and simpler form the
question is: When is such contraband to be deemed to be intended
for a hostile use so as to justify its capture? The vital significance
of the answer that the belligerents may give is hardly yet appreciated.
Thus far popular attention in this country has been focussed on the
lack of American and other neutral ships available for our foreign
trade. Relying upon the assurance that “free ships make free goods,”
we have concerned ourselves about vehicles of transportation rather
than with the safety of our produce. It is important to note what
assurance the Declaration of London affords. It is there provided
that conditional contraband is liable to capture if shown to be destined
for the use of the armed forces of a belligerent, or for a department of
its Government unless, in the latter case, circumstances show that
the goods cannot in fact be used for the purposes of the war. (This
exception is not, however, applicable to a consignment of gold or
silver, or paper money.) It is further provided that a hostile desti-
nation is presumed to exist in case the goods are consigned, not only
to enemy authorities, but also to a contractor in the enemy country
who as a matter of common knowledge supplies articles of the same
No. 166] An Ambassador on Duty 701
kind to the enemy. Again, a similar presumption arises if the goods
are consigned to a fortified place belonging to the enemy or to another
place serving as hase for its forces.
In the meantime American exporters must face the fact that, if
propriety of conduct is to be tested by the Declaration of London, the
belligerent Powers are in a position to capture and condemn food-
stuffs, coal, and other articles within the same category, with an ease
that renders shadowy and dangerously vague the distinction between
what is conditional and what is absolute contraband.
Charles Cheney Hyde, in World’s Work, September, 1914 (Garden City, Double-
day, Page, 1914), 126-128 passim.
166. An Ambassador on Duty (1914)
BY AMBASSADOR WALTER HINES PAGE
For Page, see No 133 above. See also, for a criticism of his conduct as Ambas-
sador, No. 167 below. This is one of his letters to President Wilson, to whom he
was accustomed to make elaborate personal reports. For another account of dip-
lomatic problems at the outbreak of the war, see James W. Gerard, My Four Years
in Germany.
To THE PRESIDENT
Lonpon, Sunday, Aug. 9, 1914.
EAR MR. PRESIDENT:
God save us! What a week it has been! Last Sunday I was
down here at the cottage I have taken for the summer—an hour out
of London—uneasy because of the apparent danger and of what Sir
Edward Grey had told me. During the day people began to go to the
Embassy, but not in great numbers—merely to ask what they should
do in case of war. The Secretary whom I had left in charge on Sunday
telephoned me every few hours and laughingly told funny experiences
with nervous women who came in and asked absurd questions. Of
course, we all knew the grave danger that war might come but nobody
could by the wildest imagination guess at what awaited us. On Mon-
day I was at the Embassy earlier than I think I had ever been there
before and every member of the staff was already on duty. Before
breakfast time the place was filled—packed like sardines. This was
702 The United States as a Neutral [1914
two days before war was declared. There was no chance to talk to
individuals, such was the jam. I got on a chair and explained that I
had already telegraphed to Washington—on Saturday—suggesting
the sending of money and ships, and asking them to be patient. I
made a speech to them several times during the day, and kept the
Secretaries doing so at intervals. More than 2,000 Americans crowded
into those offices (which are not large) that day. We were kept there
till two o’clock in the morning. The Embassy has not been closed
since.
Mr. Kent of the Bankers’ Trust Company in New York volunteered
to form an American Citizens’ Relief Committee. He and other men
of experience and influence organized themselves at the Savoy Hotel.
The hotel gave the use of nearly a whole floor. They organized them-
selves quickly and admirably and got information about steamships
and currency, etc. We began to send callers at the Embassy to this
Committee for such information. The banks were all closed for four
days. These men got money enough—put it up themselves and used
their English banking friends for help—to relieve all cases of actual
want of cash that came to them. Tuesday the crowd at the Embassy
was still great but smaller. The big space at the Savoy Hotel gave
them room to talk to one another and to get relief for immediate needs.
By that time I had accepted the volunteer services of five or six men
to help us explain to the people—and they have all worked manfully
day and night. We now have an orderly organization at four places:
The Embassy, the Consul-General’s Office, the Savoy, and the Ameri-
can Society in London, and everything is going well. Those two first
days, there was, of course, great confusion. Crazy men and weeping
women were imploring and cursing and demanding—God knows it
was bedlam turned loose. I have been called a man of the greatest
genius for an emergency by some, by others a damned fool, by others
every epithet between these extremes. Men shook English banknotes
in my face and demanded United States money and swore our Gov-
ernment and its agents ought all to be shot. Women expected me to
hand them steamship tickets home. When some found out that they
could not get tickets on the transports (which they assumed would
sail the next day) they accused me of favouritism. These absurd
experiences will give you a hint of the panic. But now it has worked
out all right, thanks to the Savoy Committee and other helpers.
No. 166] An Ambassador on Duty 703
Meantime, of course, our telegrams and mail increased almost
as much as our callers. I have filled the place with stenographers, I
have got the Savoy people to answer certain classes of letters, and we
have caught up. My own time and the time of two of the secretaries
has been almost wholly taken with governmental problems; hundreds
of questions have come in from every quarter that were never asked
before. But even with them we have now practically caught up—it
has been a wonderful week!
Then the Austrian Ambassador came to give up his Embassy—to
have me take over his business. Every detail was arranged. The
next morning I called on him to assume charge and to say good-bye,
when he told me that he was not yet going! That was a stroke of
genius by Sir Edward Grey, who informed him that Austria had not
given England cause for war. That may work out, or it may not.
Pray Heaven it may! Poor Mensdorff, the Austrian Ambassador,
does not know where he is. He is practically shut up in his guarded
Embassy, weeping and waiting the decree of fate.
Then came the declaration of war, most dramatically. Tuesday
night, five minutes after the ultimatum had expired, the Admiralty
telegraphed to the fleet “Go.” In a few minutes the answer came
back “Off.” Soldiers began to march through the city going to the
railway stations. An indescribable crowd so blocked the streets
about the Admiralty, the War Office, and the Foreign Office, that at
one o’clock in the morning I had to drive in my car by other streets
to get home.
The next day the German Embassy was turned over to me. I went
to see the German Ambassador at three o’clock in the afternoon.
He came down in his pajamas, a crazy man. I feared he might
literally go mad. He is of the anti-war party and he had done his best
and utterly failed. This interview was one of the most pathetic
experiences of my life. The poor man had not slept for several nights.
Then came the crowds of frightened Germans, afraid they would be
arrested. They besieged the German Embassy and our Embassy. I
put one of our naval officers in the German Embassy, put the United
States seal on the door to protect it, and we began business there, too.
Our naval officer has moved in—sleeps there. He has an assistant,
a stenographer, a messenger: and I gave him the German automobile
and chauffeur and two English servants that were left there. He has
704 The United States as a Neutral [1914
the job well in hand now, under my and Laughlin’s supervision. But
this has brought still another new lot of diplomatic and governmental
problems—a lot of them. Three enormous German banks in London
have, of course, been closed. Their managers pray for my aid. Howl-
ing women come and say their innocent German husbands have been
arrested as spies. English, Germans, Americans—everybody has
daughters and wives and invalid grandmothers alone in Germany.
In God’s name, they ask, what can I do for them? Here come stacks
of letters sent under the impression that I can send them to Germany.
But the German business is already well in hand and I think that
that will take little of my own time and will give little trouble. I
shall send a report about it in detail to the Department the very
first day I can find time to write it. In spite of the effort of the
English Government to remain at peace with Austria, I fear I
shall yet have the Austrian Embassy too. But I can attend
to it.
Now, however, comes the financial job of wisely using the $300,000
which I shall have to-morrow. I am using Mr. Chandler Anderson
as counsel, of course; I have appointed a Committee—Skinner, the
Consul-General, Lieut. Commander McCrary of our Navy, Kent of
the Bankers’ Trust Company, New York, and one other man yet to
be chosen—to advise, after investigation, about every proposed ex-
penditure 20.)
. . . Ifindit hard to get about much. People stop me on the street,
follow me to luncheon, grab me as I come out of any committee mee*
ing—to know my opinion of this or that—how can they get homer
Will such-and-such a boat fly the American flag? Why did I take
the German Embassy? I have to fight my way about and rush to an
automobile. I have had to buy me a second one to keep up the racket.
Buy?—no—only bargain for it, for I have not any money. But
everybody is considerate, and that makes no matter for the moment.
This little cottage is in an out-of-the-way place, twenty-five miles from
London, where I am trying to write and sleep, has been found by
people to-day, who come in automobiles to know how they may reach
their sick kinspeople in Germany. I have not had a bath for three
days: as soon as I got in the tub, the telephone rang an “urgent”
call!
Upon my word, if one could forget the awful tragedy, all this
No. 166] An Ambassador on Duty 705
experience would be worth a lifetime of commonplace. One surprise
follows another so rapidly that one loses all sense of time: it seems
an age since last Sunday.
I shall never forget Sir Edward Grey’s telling me of the ultimatum—
while he wept; nor the poor German Ambassador who has lost in
his high game—almost a demented man; nor the King as he declaimed
at me for half-an-hour and threw up his hands and said, “My God,
Mr. Page, what else could we do?” Nor the Austrian Ambassador’s
wringing his hands and weeping and crying out, “ My dear Colleague,
my dear Colleague.” .. .
. . . Everybody has forgotten what war means—forgotten that
folks get hurt. But they are coming around to it now. A United
States Senator telegraphs me: “Send my wife and daughter home on
the first ship.” Ladies and gentlemen filled the steerage of that
ship—not a bunk left; and his wife and daughter are found three days
later sitting in a swell hotel waiting for me to bring them stateroom
tickets on a silver tray! One of my young fellows in the Embassy
rushes into my office saying that a man from Boston, with letters of
introduction from Senators and Governors and Secretaries, et al.,
was demanding tickets of admission to a picture gallery, and a sec-
retary to escort him there.
“What shall I do with him?”
“Put his proposal to a vote of the 200 Americans in the room and
see them draw and quarter him.”
I have not yet heard what happened. .. .
And this awful tragedy moves on to—what? We do not know
what is really happening, so strict is the censorship. But it seems in-
evitable to me that Germany will be beaten, that the horrid period
of alliances and armaments will not come again, that England will
gain even more of the earth’s surface, that Russia may next play the
menace; that all Europe (as much as survives) will be bankrupt;
that relatively we shall be immensely stronger financially and polit-
ically—there must surely come many great changes—very many, yet
undreamed of. Be ready; for you will be called on to compose this
huge quarrel. I thank Heaven for many things—first, the Atlantic
Ocean; second, that you refrained from war in Mexico; third, that
we kept our treaty—the canal tolls victory, I mean. Now, when all
this half of the world will suffer the unspeakable brutalization of war,
726 The United States as a Neutral [rors
we shall preserve our moral strength, our political powers, and our
ideals.
God save us!
We ER.
From The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, edited by Burton J. Hendrick
(Garden City, copyright 1922, Doubleday, Page and Company), 303-310 passim.
167. An Impressionable Diplomat (1915)
BY C. HARTLEY GRATTAN (1925)
For Page, see No. 133 above. One of his letters describing his own work is given
in No. 166 above.—Bibliography: Burton J. Hendrick, Life and Letters of Walter
H. Page.
AGE had been born in a North Carolina hamiet; the gaudy trap-
pings of royalty naturally made a powerful impression upon him.
Things went on swimmingly, almost deliriously, for a year. He went
everywhere, got to know everybody, was soon on familiar terms
with dukes, princesses and members of the Cabinet. Then, of a
sudden, came the colossal shock of the war—and the era of dinners
and dances gave way to an era of bitter struggle. Page’s job, up
to this time, had been largely ornamental. Now he was confronted
by serious business. It was his job to safeguard the interests of the
United States in a world at strife—in particular, to safeguard such
rights as had been wrung from Great Britain, the country to which
he was accredited, after more than a century of diplomatic and mil-
itary combat. On August 11, 1914, President Wilson issued his
neutrality proclamation. In it were these sentences:
We must be impartial in thought as well as in action; we must put a curb on our
sentiments as well as upon every transaction that might be construed as a prefer-
ence of one party to the struggle before another. . . . Every man who really loves
America will act and speak in the true spirit of neutrality, which is the spirit of
impartiality and fairness and friendliness to all concerned.
Here is a plain definition of “one who really loves America.” To
what extent did Mr. Page meet it?
No. 167] An Impressionable Diplomat 707
“Mr. Page had one fine qualification for his post,” a British states-
man once remarked to B. J. Hendrick. “From the beginning he saw
that there was a right and a wrong to the matter. He did not believe
that Great Britain and Germany were equally to blame. He believed
that Great Britain was right and that Germany was wrong.” Page,
in fact, swallowed the whole of the British propaganda, hook, bait
and sinker. On September r1, 1914, he wrote to President Wilson:
“Can anyone longer disbelieve the completely barbarous behavior
of Prussians?” Thus early was he convinced. From that time on-
ward his letters become little better than powerful arguments for the
British case, and hysterical pleas for the United States to back up
England, regardless of all disputes regarding English violations of
American rights. On September 22, he wrote to Colonel House:
“Tf Germany should win, our Monroe Doctrine would at once be shot
in two, and we should have to get ‘out of the sun.’ . . . If England
wins . . . England will not need our friendship as much as she now
needs it.” ... He made no effort to conceal his violently pfo-
English attitude. He even arrogated to himself, public servant
though he was, the right to pass upon the legitimacy of American
neutrality. President Wilson had proclaimed that “we must be
impartial in thought as well as action.” Page made little attempt
to be either and he afterward wrote: ‘The President and the govern-
ment in their insistence upon the moral quality of neutrality, missed
the larger meaning of the war. It is at bottom nothing but the effort
of the Berlin absolute monarch and his group to impose their will on
as large a part of the world as they can overrun. The President
started out with the idea that it was a war brought on by many ob-
scure causes—economic and the like, and he thus missed its whole
meaning.”
But did he? Didn’t Mr. Page, rather, give merely a succinct
summary of what the British propaganda service said the war was
about? He never seemed for a minute to realize that the English as
well as their enemies resorted to propaganda. He even swallowed
the Belgian atrocity stories, for he wrote to Colonel House on No-
vember 12, 1915, that but for the British fleet London would be ruined
and plundered ... and thousands of English women would be
violated—“‘just as dead French girls are found in many German
trenches that have been taken in France.” He continually denounced
708 The United States as a Neutral [rors
alleged German opinions as propaganda, but supported English
opinions, no matter how wild and absurd, as the truth. “The Allied
propaganda,” says Bertrand Russell, “through British control of
the cables secured wider publicity than that of Germany, and achieved,
a notable success in winning the sympathy, and ultimately the co-
operation of the United States.” This propaganda, in fact, achieved
the amazing coup of writing, to all intents and purposes, the official
communications of the American ambassador to England!
But Page’s love affair did not run quite smoothly. In December,
1914, Colonel House wrote to him: “The President wished me to
ask you to please be more careful not to express any unneutral feel-
ing. ... He said that both Mr. Bryan and Mr. Lansing had re-
marked upon your leaning in that direction.” ... That warning,
however, did not deter Page, and even a casual reading of his letters
reveals how thoroughly unneutral and pro-Ally he was during all the
period of American neutrality. A constant complaint of his was that
the demands of the American State Department, and the pronounce-
ments of Wilson, were bringing the United States into official and
popular disfavor in England. He seems to have deliberately dis-
obeyed his instructions intimating to Grey that the American notes
of protest against English acts upon the high seas were mere matters
of form, and not intended to be taken seriously. He thus weakened
his own government, and greatly strengthened England, and so en-
couraged her violation of the rights of neutrals, and particularly of
the rights of the United States. What Page worried about most was
the possibility that any effort to safeguard the latter would make the
English angry, and thus imperil his Anglo-American alliance. He
shared precisely the English attitude toward their violation, and did
his best to minimize their significance. His railings against Lansing
and Polk and the other international lawyers at Washington were so
vociferous and prolonged that Mr. Hendrick devotes a chapter of
the biography to the quarrel. His pro-English attitude completely
blinded him to the significance of England’s extensive violations of
American neutrality and made him a consistent apologist for her.
By his attitude he completely obstructed the State Department’s
effort to hold England to international law. .. .
. Many people whom the ambassador met in the course of this
visit still retain memories of his fervor in “what had now become with
No. 167] An Impressionable Diplomat 70C
him a sacred cause.” The sacred cause was to align the United States
on the side of the Allies. It was Mr. Page’s official, if not sacred,
duty to help the State Department to hold England to international
law, and so protect the rights of Americans. Instead of doing that
he threw all his strength upon the other side.
When, at last, his high services to England came to fruition and the
United States entered the war, Mr. Hendrick tells us that “a well-
known Englishman happened to meet Page leaving his house in
Grosvenor Square the day after the declaration. He stopped and
shook the ambassador’s hand. ‘Thank God,’ the Englishman said,
‘that there is one hypocrite less in London today.’ ‘What do you
mean?’ asked Page. ‘I mean you. Pretending all this time that
you were neutral: That isn’t necessary any longer.’ ‘You are right!’
the ambassador answered as he walked on with a laugh and wave of
the hand.” The King of England said to him in reviewing the situa-
tion: “ Ah—Ah !—we knew where you stood all the time.”
But now we are grandly told that Englishmen “didn’t know any-
one could be as American as Page!”
But by far the most amazing act of Page’s ambassadorship occured
in connection with the Dacia. Mr. Hendrick embeds this incident
in approving comment, and characterizes it thus: “This suggestion
from Page was one of the great inspirations of the war. It amounted
to little less than genius.” The Dacia had been transferred to Ameri-
can registry under a law passed in the early days of the war, admitting
foreign ships to American registry. The vessel was loaded with cotton,
at that time (1915) not contraband. She was American-owned at the
time of her sailing (her previous owners had been Germans), Ameri-
can-manned, flew the American flag, and had American registry
according to the laws of the United States. Before the sailing Eng-
land notified the State Department that the boat was considered as
subject to capture, as “enemy property,” implying in this notification
her total disregard of the American law of registry. Mr. Page, being
an American, was interested in this matter. The Dacia sailed... .
To quote Mr. Hendrick, who tells the incident better than it can be
paraphrased:
When matters had reached this pass Page one day dropped into
the Foreign Office.
“Have you ever heard of the British fleet, Sir Edward? ” he asked.
JIO The United States as a Neutral [1915
Grey admitted that he had, though the question obviously puzzled
him.
“Ves,” Page went on musingly. “We've all heard of the British
fleet. Perhaps we have heard too much about it. Don’t you think
it’s had too much advertising?”
The Foreign Secretary looked at Page with an expression that
implied a lack of confidence in his sanity.
“But have you ever heard of the French fleet?” the American went
on. “France has a fleet, too, I believe.”
Sir Edward granted that.
“Don’t you think that the French fleet ought to have a little ad-
vertising?”’
“What on earth are you talking about?”
“Well,” said Page, “There’s the Dacia. Why not let the French
fleet seize it and get some advertising?”
A gleam of understanding immediately shot across Grey’s face.
. . . So the French fleet captured and condemned the Dacia. The
American ambassador had conspired with the government to which
he was accredited to bring about the seizure of an American vessel by a
foreign government. No wonder his suggestion staggered even Sir
Edward. ‘Truly it was “one of the great inspirations of the war.”
But whose war? Certainly not America’s, for all this took place in
1915, over two years before the United States entered the conflict.
Ranking perhaps next to the Dacia case in the forwarding of as-
tonishing violations of international law and diplomatic usage was
Page’s unprecedented consent to a British request for permission to
intercept and search the baggage of all American diplomatic officials
below the rank of minister who happened to be taken by the British
while traveling to and from their posts in Europe. The British guards
at Kirkwall admitted the illegality of the procedure, but demonstrated
Page’s acquiescence in the practice. A number of American repre-
sentatives appear to have been subjected to this amazing indignity;
in one case known to the writer the British were held at bay only at
the point of an impressively manipulated revolver.
In all this Mr. Page’s conduct cannot be excused, as some have tried
to excuse it, on the ground that he meant well and had uppermost
in his mind only the promotion of a great cause—Anglo-American
unity. That was likewise the obsession of Benedict Arnold in the
No. 168] The Lusitania Note 711
later days of the American Revolution, and he worked for it in a more
direct and courageous fashion.
C. Hartley Grattan, The Walter Hines Page Legend, in American Mercury (New
York, 1925), VI, 41-50 passim. Reprinted by permission of the author.
168. The Lusitania Note (1915)
BY PRESIDENT WOODROW WILSON
President Wilson was really his own Secretary of State. Bryan, who was ap-
pointed to that position, was opposed to the participation of the United States in
the World War on any terms drafted by the President. When Wilson insisted on
the sending of this note in the customary manner over the signature of the Secretary
of State, Bryan resigned.
O AMBASSADOR GERARD:
Please call on the Minister of Foreign Affairs and after reading
to him this communication leave with him a copy.
In view of recent acts of the German authorities in violation of
American rights on the high seas which culminated in the torpedoing
and sinking of the British steamship Lusitania on May 7, 1915, by
which over roo American citizens lost their lives, it is clearly wise and
desirable that the Government of the United States and the Imperial
German Government should come to a clear and full understanding
as to the grave situation which has resulted.
The sinking of the British passenger steamer Falaba by a German
submarine on March 28, through which Leon C. Thrasher, an Ameri-
can citizen, was drowned; the attack on April 28 on the American
vessel Cushing by a German aéroplane; the torpedoing on May 1 of the
American vessel Gulflight by a German submarine, as a result of which
two or more American citizens met their deaths; and, finally, the
torpedoing and sinking of the steamship Lusitania, constitute a series
of events which the Government of the United States has observed
vith growing concern, distress, and amazement.
Recalling the humane and enlightened attitude hitherto assumed
by the Imperial German Government in matters of international
right, and particularly with regard to the freedom of the seas; having
712 The United States as a Neutral {1915
learned to recognize the German views and the German influence in
the field of international obligation as always engaged upon the side
of justice and humanity; and having understood the instructions of
the Imperial German Government to its naval commanders to be
upon the same plane of humane action prescribed by the naval codes
of other nations, the Government of the United States was loath to
believe—it cannot now bring itself to believe—that these acts, so
absolutely contrary to the rules, the practices, and the spirit of modern
warfare, could have the countenance or sanction of that great Govern-
ment. It feels it to be its duty, therefore, to address the Imperial
German Government concerning them with the utmost frankness
and in the earnest hope that it is not mistaken in expecting action on
the part of the Imperial German Government which will correct the
unfortunate impressions which have been created and vindicate
once more the position of that Government with regard to the sacred
freedom of the seas.
The Government of the United States has been apprised that the
Imperial German Government considered themselves to be obliged
by the extraordinary circumstances of the present war and the meas-
ures adopted by their adversaries in seeking to cut Germany off from
all commerce, to adopt methods of retaliation which go much beyond
the ordinary methods of warfare at sea, in the proclamation of a war
zone from which they have warned neutral ships to keep away. This
Government has already taken occasion to inform the Imperial
German Government that it cannot admit the adoption of such meas-
ures or such a warning of danger to operate as in any degree an abbrevi-
ation of the rights of American shipmasters or of American citizens
bound on lawful errands as passengers on merchant ships of belligerent
nationality; and that it must hold the Imperial German Government
to a strict accountability for any infringement of those rights, inten-
tional or incidental. It does not understand the Imperial German
Government to question those rights. It assumes, on the contrary,
that the Imperial Government accept, as of course, the rule that the
lives of noncombatants, whether they be of neutral citizenship or
citizens of one of the nations at war, cannot lawfully or rightfully
be put in jeopardy by the capture or destruction of an unarmed
merchantman, and recognize also, as all other nations do, the obliga-
tion to take the usual precaution of visit and search to ascertain
No. 168] The Lusitania Note 713
whether a suspected merchantman is in fact of belligerent nationality
or is in fact carrying contraband of war under a neutral flag.
The Government of the United States, therefore, desires to call the
attention of the Imperial German Government with the utmost
earnestness to the fact that the objection to their present method of
attack against the trade of their enemies lies in the practical impossi-
bility of employing submarines in the destruction of commerce with-
out disregarding those rules of fairness, reason, justice, and humanity,
which all modern opinion regards as imperative. It is practically
impossible for the officers of a submarine to visit a merchantman at sea
and examine her papers and cargo. It is practically impossible for
them to make a prize of her; and, if they cannot put a prize crew on
board of her, they cannot sink her without leaving her crew and all
on board of her to the mercy of the sea in her small boats. These
facts it is understood the Imperial German Government frankly
admit. Weare informed that in the instances of which we have spoken
time enough for even that poor measure of safety was not given, and
in at least two cases cited not so much as a warning was received.
Manifestly submarines cannot be used against merchantmen, as the
last few weeks have shown, without an inevitable violation of many
sacred principles of justice and humanity.
American citizens act within their indisputable rights in taking
their ships and in traveling wherever their legitimate business calls
them upon the high seas, and exercise those rights in what should be
the well-justified confidence that their lives will not be endangered
by acts done in clear violation of universally acknowledged interna-
tional obligations, and certainly in the confidence that their own
Government will sustain them in the exercise of their rights.
There was recently published in the newspapers of the United
States, I regret to inform the Imperial German Government, a formal
warning, purporting to come from the Imperial German Embassy at
Washington, addressed to the people of the United States, and stating,
in effect, that any citizen of the United States who exercised his
right of free travel upon the seas would do so at his peril if his journey
should take him within the zones of waters within which the Imperial
German Navy was using submarines against the commerce of Great
Britain and France, notwithstanding the respectful but very earnest
protest of his Government, the Government of the United States.
714 The United States as a Neutral [r915
I do not refer to this for the purpose of calling the attention of the
Imperial German Government at this time to the surprising irregular-
ity of a communication from the Imperial German Embassy at Wash-
ington addressed to the people of the United States through the
newspapers, but only for the purpose of pointing out that no warning
that an unlawful ard inhumane act will be committed can possibly
be accepted as an excuse or palliation for that act or as an abatement
of the responsibility for its commission.
Long acquainted as the Government has been with the character of
the Imperial German Government and with the high principles of
equity by which they have in the past been actuated and guided, the
Government of the United States cannot believe that the commanders
of the vessels which committed these acts of lawlessness did so except
under a misapprehension of the orders issued by the Imperial German
naval authorities. It takes it for granted that, at least within the
practical possibilities of every such case, the commanders even of
submarines were expected to do nothing that would involve the lives
of noncombatants or the safety of neutral ships, even at the cost of
failing of their object of capture or destruction. It confidently ex-
pects, therefore, that the Imperial German Government will disavow
the acts of which the Government of the United States complains,
that they will make reparation so far as reparation is possible for in-
juries which are without measure, and that they will take immediate
steps to prevent the recurrence of anything so obviously subversive
of the principles of warfare for which the Imperial German Govern-
ment have in the past so wisely and so firmly contended.
The Government and the people of the United States look to the
Imperial German Government for just, prompt, and enlightened
action in this vital matter with the greater confidence because the
United States and Germany are bound together not only by special
ties of friendship but also by the explicit stipulations of the treaty
of 1828 between the United States and the Kingdom of Prussia.
Expressions of regret and offers of reparation in case of the destruc-
tion of neutral ships sunk by mistake, while they may satisfy inter-
national obligations, if no loss of life results, cannot justify, or excuse
a practice, the natural and necessary effect of which is to subject neu-
tral nations and neutral persons to new and immeasurable risks.
The Imperial German Government will not expect the Govern-
No. 169] A Message to America us
ment of the United States to omit any word or any act necessary to
the performance of its sacred duty of maintaining the rights of the
United States and its citizens and of safeguarding their free exercise
and enjoyment.
Note dated May 13, 1915, and sent over signature of the Secretary of State.
———_ >
169. A Message to America (1915)
BY ALAN SEEGER
Alan Seeger (1888-1916) enlisted in the Foreign Legion of the French Army,
and was killed in an attack on Belloy-en-Santree in the World War. Of him
John Hall Wheelock said that “for some spirits the every-day pressure of life is not
sufficient, and every-day demands of life not large nor heroic enough in their claim.”
His letters, as well as his poems, should be used for an understanding of his fatalistic
philosophy.
OU have the grit and the guts, I know;
You are ready to answer blow for blow.
You are virile, combative, stubborn, hard,
But your honor ends with your own back-yard;
Each man intent on his private goal,
You have no feeling for the whole;
What singly none would tolerate
You let unpunished hit the state,
Unmindful that each man must share
The stain he lets his country wear,
And (what no traveller ignores)
That her good name is often yours.
You are proud in the pride that feels its might;
From your imaginary height
Men of another race or hue
Are men of a lesser breed to you:
The neighbor at your southern gate
You treat with the scorn that has bred his hate.
To lend a spice to your disrespect
You call him the “greaser.” But reflect!
716
The United States as a Neutral [r915
The greaser has spat on you more than once;
He has handed you multiple affronts;
He has robbed you, banished you, burned and killed;
He has gone untrounced for the blood he spilled;
He has jeering used for his bootblack’s rag
The stars and stripes of the gringo’s flag;
And you, in the depths of your easy-chair—
What did you do, what did you care?
Did you find the season too cold and damp
To change the counter for the camp?
Were you frightened by fevers in Mexico?
I can’t imagine, but this I know—
You are impassioned vastly more
By the news of the daily baseball score
Than to hear that a dozen countrymen
Have perished somewhere in Darien,
That greasers have taken their innocent lives
And robbed their holdings and raped their wives.
Not by rough tongues and ready fists
Can you hope to tilt in the modern lists.
The armies of a littler folk
Shall pass you under the victor’s yoke,
Sobeit a nation that trains her sons
To ride their horses and point their guns—
Sobeit a people that comprehends
The limit where private pleasure ends
And where their public dues begin,
A people made strong by discipline
Who are willing to give—what you’ve no mind to—
And understand—what you are blind to—
The things that the individual
Must sacrifice for the good of all.
You have a leader who knows—the man
Most fit to be called American,
A prophet that once in generations
No. 169] A Message to America 717
Is given to point to erring nations
Brighter ideals toward which to press
And lead them out of the wilderness.
Will you turn your back on him once again?
Will you give the tiller once more to men
Who have made your country the laughing-stock
For the older peoples to scorn and mock,
Who would make you servile, despised, and weak,
A country that turns the other cheek,
Who care not how bravely your flag may float,
Who answer an insult with a note,
Whose way is the easy way in all,
And, seeing that polished arms appal
Their marrow of milk-fed pacifist,
Would tell you menace does not exist?
Are these, in the world’s great parliament,
The men you would choose to represent
Your honor, your manhood, and your pride,
And the virtues your fathers dignified?
Oh, bury them deeper than the sea
In universal obloquy;
Forget the ground where they lie, or write
For epitaph: “Too proud to fight.”
I have been too long from my country’s shores
To reckon what state of mind is yours,
But as for myself I know right well
I would go through fire and shot and shell
And face new perils, and make my bed
In new privations, if ROOSEVELT led;
But I have given my heart and hand
To serve, in serving another land,
Ideals kept bright that with you are dim;
Here men can thrill to their country’s hymn,
For the passion that wells in the Marseillaise
Is the same that fires the French these days,
And, when the flag that they love goes by,
With swelling bosom and moistened eye
718 The United States as a Neutral [r915
They can look, for they know that it floats there still
By the might of their hands and the strength of their will,
And through perils countless and trials unknown
Its honor each man has made his own.
They wanted the war no more than you,
But they saw how the certain menace grew,
And they gave two years of their youth or three
The more to insure their liberty
When the wrath of rifles and pennoned spears
Should roll like a flood on their wrecked frontiers.
They wanted the war no more than you,
But when the dreadful summons blew
And the time to settle the quarrel came
They sprang to their guns, each man was game;
And mark if they fight not to the last
For their hearths, their altars, and their past;
Yea, fight till their veins have been bled dry
For love of the country that will not die.
O friends, in your fortunate present ease
(Yet faced by the self-same facts as these),
If you would see how a race can soar
That has no love, but no fear, of war,
How each can turn from his private rôle
That all may act as a perfect whole,
How men can live up to the place they claim
And a nation, jealous of its good name,
Be true to its proud inheritance,
Oh, look over here and learn from FRANCE!
Alan Seeger, Poems (New York, Scribner’s, 1916), 162-165.
CHAPTER XXXI— BUCKLING ON THE ARMOR
170. The International Food Problem (1917)
BY ROBERT W. BRUERE
Bruére is a New York journalist. Food administration in the United States was
less a matter of mandatory regulation than one of educating the people to volun-
tary coöperation in saving—a task so well performed by Herbert Hoover as Food
Administrator, that to economize in this patriotic fashion became to “ Hooverize.”
—Bibliography: C. R. Van Hise, Conservation and Regulation during the War.
N terms of practical administration, how was this common table
served; through what instrumentalities did we divide with our
Allies our wheat loaf?
As early as August, 1914, France, with the co-operation of Great
Britain, established the Commission Internationale de Ravitaillement,
which was soon extended to co-ordinate the purchases not only of
Great Britain and France, but of all the Allies, so as to prevent com-
petition among them and to facilitate the satisfaction of their several
and joint needs. In December, 1915, the British, French, and Italian
governments initiated a system of joint purchases of wheat, flour, and
corn which was later developed into the Wheat Executive, consisting
of one representative of each country, “to purchase, allocate, and
arrange for the transport of wheat, flour, and other cereal products
for the three countries.” This Wheat Executive proved so useful
in welding the co-operative unity of these Allies that it led to the
establishment of other similar bodies to deal with the garnering
throughout the world of other necessities—meat, animal fats, oil
seeds, sugar, nitrate of soda, hides, wool and wool products, explosives,
and the raw material for the manufacture of explosives, lead, copper,
coal. And, of necessity, the Allied governments established an in-
ternational executive through which to pool and allocate their shipping
tonnage.
These were the instrumentalities—not a legalistic court of arbitra-
tion——through which the common table was supplied, through which
719
720 Buckling on the Armor [r917
harmony and effective co-operation were made possible among the
nations associated against the individualistic autocracies of the Cen-
tral Powers—through which the military triumph of the armed
democracies was guaranteed.
What was America’s contribution to the common table? In the
five years preceding our entrance into the war the average per capita
consumption of wheat in the United States was five and three-tenths
bushels. For the year 1917-18 we reduced our per capita consump-
tion to a little less than four bushels. We had no bumper crop that
year; we produced less than with care and disciplined intelligence
we could have produced. We ourselves did not go hungry. Never
before had so large a percentage of our own people been decently fed.
And yet, according to the British Food Ministry, the United States,
from July, 1917, to April, 1918, exported to the Allies 80,000,000
bushels of wheat products, of which 50,000,000 represented the vol-
untary gift of the American people. On September 24, 1918, the
United States Food Administration made the following announce-
ment:
“Under the agreement entered into by the Food Administration
with the food-controllers of the Allied nations, our breadstuffs export
program for the coming year will be, wheat, rye, barley, and corn,
or flour, calculated as grain for breadstuffs, 409,320,000 bushels, of
which from 100,000,000 to 165,000,000 may be cereals other than
wheat.”
The reference here to the agreement with the food-controllers of
the Allies invites special notice. The Allies, like ourselves, were
looking upon the bread-supply of the entire world, not as the play-
thing of the so-called law of supply and demand—and incidentally
vf profiteering middlemen—but as the common stock of all those who
jat at the common table, to be consciously and deliberately appor-
tioned to each of the co-operating nations according to their several
‘mathematically determined needs. More than this. The computa-
tion went beyond the requirements of the individual nations as
aggregates, to the needs of the individual men and women and children
within each national group. At its first meeting, held in Paris in
March, 1918, the Inter-Allied Scientific Food Commission succeeded
in doing what until then had been regarded as a fantastic impos-
sibility—it arrived at an agreement on the minimum food require-
No. 170] The International Food Problem 725
ments of the average man. As reported in The Survey for August 3,
1918, the commission, at its second meeting, held in Rome, worked
out the food requirements of each of the Allied countries on the basis
of the average man and in the light of population statistics; setting
against these requirements the home production, actual and potential,
of each nation in order to determine how much food would have to
be served to each at the common table. Thus the Inter-Allied Sci-
entific Food Commission, acting in co-operation with the Allied
food-controllers and the international Wheat Executive, brought
“the vision of a world organization for the feeding of mankind an
appreciable step nearer.”
Without this international economic organization for the co-
operative apportionment of the world’s supply of food, harmony
among the nations associated against imperialistic militarism would
have been impossible. Revolution within the nations whose domestic
supplies were inadequate to feed their people would have forced
other nations than Russia to capitulate—to make a separate peace.
And as with wheat, so with all other basic commodities. What
America did with her wheat loaf she did also with her sugar, meat
fats, steel, cotton, coal, timber, and whatever things of value to the
common cause she had. On July 17, 1918, the Food Administration
announced that if the people of the United States continued to abate
their normal consumption of sugar as they had done during the pre-
ceding year, their saving, and thus their contribution to the common
table, measured by the price of sugar then prevailing in Canada,
France, the United Kingdom, and Italy, would total for the com-
ing year alone about $600,000,000. During the year 1916-17 the
United States exported 2,000,000,000 pounds of meats and fats;
during 1917-18, 3,000,000,000—1,000,000,000 pounds of meats and
fats was one of America’s contributions to the common table. About
one-half our output of more than 1,000,000,000 pounds of copper from
January to June, 1918, went to the Allies. We packed our dry gro-
ceries in paper containers instead of tin because the Allies needed
the metal. We stopped building houses for ourselves in order that
ships might be built to carry our contributions across the sea. We
stopped wearing all-wool in order that not only our own soldiers,
but the soldiers and civilians of England, France, Belgium, Italy,
might be warmly clad. Before the war the United States had never
722 Buckling on the Armor [1917
loaned money to any foreign state. In September, 1918, the Bulletin
of the Paris Chamber of Commerce noted with admiration that the
total of America’s advances to the Allies then exceeded $6,000,000,000.
In addition to this vast sum, America had, during the first four years
of the war alone, freely given more than $4,000,000,000 to war char-
ities. And what the United States did, it is important to remember,
is but an illustration of what all the Allies did to serve the common
purpose.
The common table, not a court of arbitration, became the symbol
of a new nationalism and a new internationalism.
Robert W. Bruére, Changing America, in Harper’s Magazine, February, 1910,
289-204.
171. War with Germany (1917)
BY SENATOR HENRY CABOT LODGE
On Lodge, see No. 126 above and No. 202 below. The speech reprinted here
presents the unusual spectacle of an ardent Republican lending his full support to
an administration with which he was not in sympathy, and which he opposed quite
as vigorously when the war-time need for unanimity was past.—General bibliog-
raphy of the war: John Spencer Bassett, Our War with Germany; H. C. Brown, The
A. E. F. with General Pershing; Charles G. Dawes, Journal of the Great War; Hun-
ter Liggett, Commanding an American Army; R. R. McCormick, The Army of 1918;
A. W. Page, Our 110 Days’ Fighting; John B. McMaster, The United States and the
World War; Shipley Thomas, History of the A. E. F. On the war at sea, see bibliog.
raphy in No. 187 below. On industrial participation in the war, see G. B. Clarkson,
Industrial America in the World War; Samuel Gompers, American Labor and the
War; F. F. Kelley, What America Did; E. A. Powell, The Army behind the Army.
See also letters and biographies of statesmen and other war-time leaders.
O one is more conscious than I that this is a moment for action
and not for debate. But, as a member of the Committee on
Foreign Relations, and having taken part in framing this resolution,
I wish briefly to state why I support it with the greatest earnestness
of which I am capable.
The most momentous power entrusted to Congress by the Constitu-
tion is the authority to declare war, and never has Congress been
called to a more solemn exercise of this great function than at this
moment. We have submitted to wrongs and outrages from the Central
No. 171] War with Germany 723
Powers of Europe—wrongs which involve not only injury to property,
but the destruction of American lives—with a long patience. We
have borne and forborne to the very limit of endurance. Now the
inevitable end is here and we are about to declare war against Ger-
many.
Speaking for myself and, I hope, for my associates generally on this
side of the Chamber, I desire to say that in this crisis, and when the
country is at war, party lines will disappear, and this disappearance
of the party line will, I am confident, not be confined to the minority.
Both Democrats and Republicans must forget party in the presence
of the common danger. This is not, and cannot be, a party war.
It is a war in which all Americans must be united, and no one must
ask a loyal citizen, high or low, who seeks to serve his country in the
field or in civil life to what party he belongs, any more than it would
be possible to ask his religion or his race. As Americans we shall
all, I am sure, be prepared to give to the Executive money, men, and
all the necessary powers for waging war with energy and driving it
forward to a successful conclusion. The President has made recom-
mendations as to the action which he hopes Congress will take, with
which I for one am in most thorough accord.
We have only a very small army and we must proceed at once and
as rapidly as possible to build up a large one fit to defend the country
in any emergency. We must provide for the future and for the supply
of men for the Army by a system of universal military training.
T agree with the President that this new army should be chosen upon
the “principle of universal liability to service.” Our Navy is strong
in certain branches and very weak in others. It must be our business
to supply the deficiencies as rapidly as possible. Fortunately those
deficiencies are, as a rule, of the kind which can be most quickly
supplied. It is our duty to see to it that all the money and all the leg-
islation necessary for both the Army and the Navy are given at once.
The President has said that war
will involve the utmost practicable coöperation in counsel and action with the
Governments now at war with Germany and, as incident to that, the extension
to those Governments of the most liberal financial credits, in order that our re-
sources may so far as possible be added to theirs.
I am not only in full agreement with this policy advised by the
President, but it seems to me that nothing is more important than to
724 Buckling on the Armor [1917
follow it out. I am as thorough a believer as ever in the general policy
laid down by Washington when he advised the people of the United
States not to enter into permanent alliances; but the man who won the
American Revolution through the alliance with France would have
been the last to lay down a hard-and-fast rule that under no circum-
stances and for no purposes were we ever to ally ourselves with other
nations. He covers this point completely in the Farewell Address,
where he says:—
Taking care always to keep ourselves by suitable establishments on a respectable
defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary
emergencies.
Farseeing and wise, he knew very well that dangers might come
which would make a temporary alliance or agreement with foreign
nations imperative. That time has arrived. It would be madness
for us to attempt to make war alone upon Germany, and find our-
selves, perhaps, at the end left isolated, at war with that power, when
all the other nations had made peace, because we had not associated
ourselves with them. The Allies of the Entente, as they are called,
are fighting a common foe, and their foe is now ours. We cannot
send a great army across the ocean, for we have no army to send.
Yet I should be glad for one if we could send ten thousand men of our
regular troops, so that the flag of the United States might at least be
unfurled in the fields of France. I believe that the mere sight of our
flag in that region made so desolate by war would stimulate the cour-
age and help the success of those who have the same aim that we have
and who seek the same victory. We can also help the Allies, as the
President recommends, with large credits and with those supplies
which we can furnish and which they lack. We cannot do more in
any direction to bring this war to a speedy end than to give those
credits and furnish those supplies.
The President has told us that German spies
were here even before the war began, and it is, unhappily, not a matter of con-
jecture, but a fact proved in our courts of justice, that the intrigues which have
more than once come perilously near to disturbing the peace and dislocating the
industries of the country have been carried on at the instigation, with the support,
and even under the personal direction of official agents of the Imperial German
Government accredited to the Government of the United States.
No. 171] War with Germany 725
I believe myself that the overwhelming mass of our citizens of
German descent are just as loyal to the United States as any citizens
could possibly be. But there is this class of agents of the Imperial
German Government who are ready to engage in plots and crimes to
the injury of the people of this country. “Disloyalty,” if I may
again borrow the words of the President, “must be put down with a
firm hand.”
The purpose of the German submarine campaign is the absolute
destruction of the world’s mercantile tonnage, something wholly new
in warfare. In the old days, in previous wars, the ships of warring
nations were captured, frequently in large numbers, as was the case
when our privateers ranged the English Channel in the War of 1812.
But it must not be forgotten that, with few exceptions, these vessels,
when captured, were sent into port, condemned as prizes, and again
put afloat. The total tonnage of the world was not materially reduced.
But the German submarine war, ruthlessly carried on, is directed
toward the complete destruction of the tonnage of the whole world,
Forced into war, as we now are, our first action should be to repair
in some measure this loss to our own tonnage and to that of the world
by seizing the ships of Germany now in our ports and putting that
additional tonnage into the world’s service.
Mr. President, we have never been a military nation; we are not
prepared for war in the modern sense; but we have vast resources and
unbounded energies, and the day when war is declared we should
devote ourselves to calling out those resources and organizing those
energies so that they can be used with the utmost effect in hastening
the complete victory. The worst of all wars is a feeble war. War is
too awful to be entered upon half-heartedly. If we fight at all, we
must fight for all we are worth. It must be no weak, hesitating war.
The most merciful war is that which is most vigorously waged and
which comes most quickly to an end.
Mr. President, no one feels the horrors of war more than I. It is
with no light heart, but with profound sadness, although with hope
and courage, that I see my country compelled to enter the great
field of conflict. But there are, in my opinion, some things worse for
a nation than war. National degeneracy is worse; national cowardice
is worse. The division of our people irto race groups, striving to direct
the course of the United States in the interest of some other country
726 Buckling on the Armor [ory
when we should have but one allegiance, one hope, and one tradition,
is far worse. All these dangers have been gathering about us and
darkening the horizon during the last three years. Whatever suffering
and misery war may bring, it will at least sweep these foul things
away. Instead of division into race groups, it will unify us into one
nation, and national degeneracy and national cowardice will slink
back into the darkness from which they should never have emerged.
I also believe that on our entrance into this war, under the con-
ditions which it has assumed, our future peace, our independence as
a proud and high-spirited nation, our very security, are at stake.
There is no other way, as I see it, except by war, to save those things
without which national existence is a mockery anda sham. But there
is a still higher purpose here as I look upon it. The President has said
with great justice that Germany is making war upon all nations. We
do not enter upon this war to secure victory for one nation as against
another. We enter this war to unite with those who are fighting the
common foe in order to preserve human freedom, democracy, and
modern civilization. They are all in grievous peril; they are all
threatened. This war is a war, as I see it, against barbarism; not the
anarchical barbarism of what are know as the Dark Ages, but or-
ganized barbarism panoplied in all the devices for the destruction of
human life which science, beneficent science, can bring forth. We
are resisting an effort to thrust mankind back to forms of govern-
ment, to political creeds and methods of conquest which we had
hoped had disappeared forever from the world. We are fighting against
a nation which, in the fashion of centuries ago, drags the inhabitants
of conquered lands into slavery; which carries off women and girls
for even worse purposes; which in its mad desire to conquer mankind
and trample them under foot has stopped at no wrong, has regarded
no treaty. The work that we are called upon to do when we enter
this war is to preserve the principles of human liberty; the principles
of democracy, and the light of modern civilization; all that we most
love, all that we hold dearer than life itself, is at stake. In such a
battle we cannot fail to win. I am glad that my country is to share
in this preservation of human freedom. I wish to see my country
gathered with the other nations who are fighting for the same end
when the time for peace comes. We seek no conquests, we desire no
territory and no new dominions. We wish simply to preserve our own
No. 172] Insurance for Soldiers 727
peace and our own security, to uphold the great doctrine which guards
the American hemisphere, and to see the disappearance of all wars or
rumors of wars from the East, if any dangers there exist. What we
want most of all by this victory which we shall help to win is to secure
the world’s peace, broad-based on freedom and democracy, a world
not controlled by a Prussian military autocracy, by Hohenzollerns
and Hapsburgs, but by the will of the free people of the earth. We
shall achieve this result, and when we achieve it, we shall be able to
say that we have not fought in vain.
Henry Cabot Lodge, Speech in United States Senate, April 4, 1917, in Cong.
Record.
172. Insurance for Soldiers (1917)
FROM THE LITERARY DIGEST
Unhappy experience with pension plans after our previous wars was the basis of
the insurance plans adopted at the outset of our participation in the World War.
ESTIFEROUS Pension Graft will become a thing of the past
through the Treasury’s indemnity-insurance plan for our soldiers
and sailors. This prospect is visioned by certain observers who hold,
as the Louisville Courier-Journal puts it, that the existing pension
system has been “one of the greatest grafts that has been fastened
upon the Federal Treasury during the history of the country.” The
insurance of the lives and the physical ability of our fighting men is a
straightforward, business means of providing indemnity and a means
of avoiding all payment of huge sums in the aggregate. The Courier-
Journal says further that the insurance plan will work as check to
persons whose claims for pensions are wholly fraudulent, “yet succeed
because neither political party has the temerity to tackle graft in
pensions and cast it out.”
The Topeka State Journal considers the insurance of our soldiers
and sailors only a new application of the well-known principle of
employees’ insurance, especially for those engaged in hazardous
employment, and it adds that the wisdom and justice of a great
Government in applying the principle to its citizens who for their
728 Buckling on the Armor [ror
country’s sake engage in the extra hazardous employment of war are
apparent to all. The Baltimore Sun hopes that the Government’s
plan will be put in shape as soon as possible, and the Omaha News
thinks the Administration should have no trouble with Congress when
it presents a finished plan, for Congress will be responsive because
it will hear from millions of American homes. In the announcement
of the project given to the press by the Treasury Department, we
read:
“The whole proposition is based on the fundamental idea that the
Government should, as a matter of justice and humanity, adequately
protect its fighting men on land and sea and their dependent families.
It aims to hearten the families of the men who go to the front and at
the same time to give to our soldiers and sailors the comforting as-
surance that whatever may be their fate, their loved ones at home
will not be left dependent upon charity. It is proposed to impose on
the public treasury the obligation of indemnifying justly the men who
have entered, or are about to enter, the American Army and Navy
to fight in the cause of liberty. With our men on the soil of France
and hundreds of thousands of others about to enter the service of
their country, the question is one of justice and fairness and the plan
should be as liberal as it is possible for a just and generous republic
to make.
“ Under the plan discussed it is suggested that provision be made for
the support of dependents of soldiers and sailors by giving them an
allotment out of the pay of the men; and also an allowance by the
Government; that officers and men be indemnified against death or
total or partial disability; that a system of rehabilitation and re-
education of disabled men be inaugurated; and that the Government
insure the lives of sailors and soldiers on their application at rates of
premium based upon ordinary risks.”
The new system would be administered, it is further stated, by the
Bureau of War-Risk Insurance of the Treasury Department, which
is already writing war-risk insurance on masters, officers, and crews
of American merchant vessels and on American hulls and cargoes.
In the August Public Bulletin of the Equitable Life Insurance Society,
as quoted by the New York Times, we learn that it was at first sug-
gested that the insurance companies themselves insure the fighters,
but because the wishes of the Government were in the direction of
No. 172] Insurance for Soldiers 729
indemnity insurance rather than life insurance, the company officials
advised Secretary McAdoo that it would be more economical for the
Government to insure the men. The Equitable asks the public to
insist upon these things in connection with the insurance plan:
“1. Immediately to urge a law providing protection for the soldier’s
dependents during his absence.
“2, To prepare to establish reéducation schools to teach him a new
trade if, through injury or sickness, he is prevented from following
his usual occupation.
“3. To provide a monthly cash indemnity (heretofore misnamed a
pension), which the people shall pay through their Government to
compensate him for loss of earning-power due to personal injury or
impaired health resulting from military service.
“4. To give his dependents, if he loses his life, a monthly cash
indemnity to guard them against want wad they are able to take care
of themselves.”
Instead of the old pension system with “its opening for extrava-
gance, scandal, and fraud,” the Equitable favors a plan which will
in effect extend the workmen’s compensation or indemnity idea from
other Government employees to the fighting men of our Army and
Navy, and we read:
“Inasmuch as this is a direct obligation and the money is rightfully
due, the word pension, which smacks of charity, should be abandoned.
“Let Congress establish at once a Soldiers’ Indemnity Fund and
prepare an indemnity certificate or contract to be given every soldier
when he enters the service. Let this indemnity contract state specifi-
cally, as similar private contracts do, the various contingencies for
which the Government promises to pay the indemnity. This contract
will give the soldier tangible evidence that the Government will take
care of him and his family in case of need. To him it will be an asset
as safe and secure and certain of performance as a Government bond.
The claims under these soldiers’ indemnity certificates should be
investigated and adjusted by the Government as they are now by
insurance companies. The operation of the entire plan can be carried
on in a simple, inexpensive way.
“Tf you agree that our soldiers should have such a scientific and
businesslike indemnity plan in place of the present wasteful, and in
some ways disgraceful, pension system, write your Senator and
730 Buckling on the Armor [ror
Congressman accordingly. Life-insurance officials responded to the
request of the Government to give their views upon this subject of
providing a substitute for the present pension system. At the con-
ference it was made clear to the Government authorities that it was
unwise to go to the expense of putting this plan into operation through
the life-insurance companies, for the Government could itself handle
it directly at less cost. The companies were ready to undertake it if
the Government so desired.
“Tt seems perfectly clear that if a workmen’s compensation law
is a good thing for Government employees (and we now have it), a
Soldiers’ Indemnity Fund on a similar plan would be a good thing
for our soldiers and sailors. Why not let these men have the comfort
of knowing when they enter this war that a grateful people have
already provided financial protection for them and the loved ones
whom they have left to go to the defense of the nation?”
The proposed Federal insurance for America’s fighting men marks
a new day, according to the Chicago Herald, which points out that—
“The plan has been tested by the sundry belligerent countries.
Canada, perhaps, has the most to teach the world, but Germany be-
gan the elaboration of a similar method of compensating war-sufferers
within two weeks of the outbreak of hostilities.”
The Literary Digest, August 11, 1917 (New York), 12-13.
e
173. War-Time Hysteria (1917)
COMMISSIONER FREDERIC C. HOWE (1925)
For Howe, see No. 12 above. For related matter, see No. 108 above and No. 194
below.—Bibliography: Z. Chafee, Jr., Freedom of Speech; L. F. Post, The Deporta-
tion Delirium of 1920.
YSTERIA over the immoral alien was followed by a two-year
panic over the “Hun.” Again inspectors, particularly civilian
secret-service agents, were given carte blanche to make arrests on
suspicion. Again Ellis Island was turned into a prison, and I had
to protect men and women from a hue and cry that was but little con-
cerned over guilt or innocence. During these years thousands of
No. 173] War-Time Hysteria Jom
Germans, Austrians, and Hungarians were taken without trial from
their homes and brought to Ellis Island. Nearly two thousand
officers and seamen from sequestered German ships were placed in my
care. Many of them had married American wives. They conducted
themselves decently and well. They were obedient to discipline.
They accepted the situation and they gave practically no trouble.
They were typical of the alien enemies the country over that were
arrested under the hysteria that was organized and developed into
a hate that lingers on to this day.
Again I had either to drift with the tide or assume the burden of
seeing that as little injustice as possible was done. I realized that
under war conditions convincing evidence could not be demanded. I
accepted that fact, but not the assumption that “the Hun should
be put against the wall and shot.” From our entrance into the war
until after the armistice my life was a nightmare. My telephone rang
constantly with inquiries from persons seeking news of husbands and
fathers who had been arrested. On my return home in the evening
I would often find awaiting me women in a state of nervous collapse
whose husbands had mysteriously disappeared, and who feared that
they had been done away with. I furnished them with such informa-
tion as was possible. On the island I had to stand between the official
insistence that the German should be treated as a criminal and the
admitted fact that the great majority of them had been arrested by
persons with little concern about their innocence or guilt and with
but little if any evidence to support the detention.
Within a short time I was branded as pro-German. I had to war
with the local staff to secure decent treatment for the aliens, and with
the army of secret-service agents to prevent the island from being
filled with persons against whom some one or other had filed a suspi-
cious inquiry.
It is a marvellous tribute to the millions of Germans, Austrians,
and Hungarians in this country that, despite the injustices to which
they were subjected and the espionage under which they lived, scarcely
an Americanized alien of these races was found guilty of any act of
disloyalty of which the entire German-American population was
suspected or accused.
The final outbreak of hysteria was directed against the “Reds”
the winter of 1918-19. It started in the State of Washington in
732 Buckling on the Armor [r917
the lumber camps, and was directed against members of the I. W. W.
organizations which had superseded the more conservative craft
unions affiliated with the American Federation of Labor. There
was a concerted determination on the part of employers to bring
wages back to the pre-war conditions and to break the power of organ-
ized labor. The movement against alien labor leaders had the support
of the Department of Justice. Private detective agencies and strike-
breakers acted with assurance that in any outrages they would be
supported by the government itself. The press joined in the cry of
“Red revolution,” and frightened the country with scare head-lines
of an army of organized terrorists who were determined to usher in
revolution by force. The government borrowed the agent provo-
cateur from old Russia; it turned loose innumerable private spies.
For two years we were in a panic of fear over the Red revolutionists,
anarchists, and enemies of the Republic who were said to be ready to
overthrow the government.
For a third time I had to stand against the current. Men and
women were herded into Ellis Island. They were brought under
guards and in special trains with instructions to get them away from
the country with as little delay as possible. Most of the aliens had
been picked up in raids on labor headquarters; they had been given a
drum-head trial by an inspector with no chance for the defense; they
were held incommunicado and often were not permitted to see either
friends or attorneys, before being shipped to Ellis Island. In these
proceedings the inspector who made the arrest was prosecutor, wit-
ness, judge, jailer, and executioner. He was clerk and interpreter as
well. This was all the trial the alien could demand under the law.
In many instances the inspector hoped that he would be put in charge
of his victim for a trip to New York and possibly to Europe at the
expense of the government. Backed by the press of his city and by
the hue and cry of the pack, he had every inducement to find the alien
guilty and arrange for his speedy deportation.
I was advised by the Commissioner-General to mind my own busi-
ness and carry out orders, no matter what they might be. Yet such
obvious injustice was being done that I could not sit quiet. Moreover,
I was an appointee of the President, and felt that I owed responsibility
to him whose words at least I was exemplifying in my actions. My
words carried no weight with my superior officials, who were intoxi-
No. 173] War-Time Hysteria 738
cated with the prominence they enjoyed and the publicity which they
received from the press. The bureaucratic organization at the island
was happy in the punishing powers which all jailers enjoy, and re-
sented any interference on behalf of its victims. Members of Congress
were swept from their moorings by an organized business propa-
ganda, and demanded that I be dismissed because I refused to rail-
road aliens to boats made ready for their deportation. I took the
position from which I would not be driven, that the alien should not
be held incommunicado and should enjoy the right of a writ of habeas
corpus in the United States courts, which was the only semblance of
legal proceedings open to him under the law.
In maintaining this position I had to quarrel with my superiors
and the official force at the island. I faced a continuous barrage from
members of Congress, from the press, from business organizations,
and prosecuting attorneys. Yet day by day aliens, many of whom
had been held in prison for months, came before the court; and the
judge, after examining the testimony, unwillingly informed the immi-
gration authorities that there was not a scintilla of evidence to support
the arrest. For in deportation cases it is not necessary to provide a
preponderance of testimony, or to convince the court of the justice of
the charge; all that the government needs to support its case is a
“scintilla” of evidence, which may be any kind of evidence at all.
If there is a bit of evidence, no matter how negligible it may be, the
order of deportation must be affirmed.
Again the pack was unleashed. No one took the trouble to ascer-
tain the facts. The press carried stories to the effect that I had re-
leased hundreds of persons ordered deported. I had released aliens,
but in each case I had been ordered to do so by the courts or the
bureau. I had observed the law when organized hysteria demanded
that it be swept aside. I had seen to it that men and women enjoyed
their legal rights, but evidently this was the worst offense I could have
committed. A congressional committee came to Ellis Island and held
protracted hearings. It listened to disaffected officials, it created
scare head-lines for the press, it did everything in its power to con-
vince the country that we were on the verge of a nation-wide revolu-
tion, of which the most hard-boiled inspectors sent out by the bureau
had reported they could not find a trace. When I went to the hearings
and demanded the right to be present, to cross-examine witnesses and
734 Buckling on the Armor [1917
see the records, when I demanded that I be put on the witness-stand
myself, the committee ordered the sergeant-at-arms to eject me from
the rooms.
As I look back over these years, my outstanding memories are not
of the immigrants. They are rather of my own people. Things that
were done forced one almost to despair of the mind, to distrust the
political state. Shreds were left of our courage, our reverence. The
Department of Justice, the Department of Labor, and Congress not
only failed to protest against hysteria, they encouraged these excesses;
the state not only abandoned the liberty which it should have pro-
tected, it lent itself to the stamping out of individualism and freedom.
It used the agent provocateur, it permitted private agencies to usurp
government powers, turned over the administration of justice to
detective agencies, card-indexed liberals and progressives. It became
frankly an agency of employing and business interests at a time when
humanity—the masses, the poor—were making the supreme sacrifice
of their lives.
I had fondly imagined that we prized individual liberty; I had be-
lieved that to Anglo-Saxons human rights were sacred and they would
be protected at any cost.
Latin peoples might be temperamental, given to hysteria; but we
were hard-headed, we stood for individuality. But I found that we
were lawless, emotional, given to mob action. We cared little for
freedom of conscience, for the rights of men to their opinions. Gov-
ernment was a convenience of business. Discussion of war profiteers
was not to be permitted. The Department of Justice lent itself to
the suppression of those who felt that war should involve equal sacri-
fice. Civil liberties were under the ban. Their subversion was not,
however, an isolated thing; it was an incident in the ascendancy of
business privileges and profits acquired during the war—an ascend-
ancy that did not bear scrutiny or brook the free discussion which is
the only safe basis of orderly popular government.
Frederic C. Howe, Confessions of a Reformer (New York, Scribner’s, 1925), 272-
277.
No. 174] Foreigners in the Army 735
174. Foreigners in the Army (1918)
BY FRED H. RINDGE, JR.
Rindge at the time of writing was Secretary of the International Committee of
the Young Men’s Christian Association. The names on war memorials and com-
munity honor rolls all over the country attest the patriotic service of men of foreign
birth or ancestry.
OSS, me no lika dis job. Give me my money. I goin’ home.”
The speaker was an Italian member of America’s new National
Army. “And,” said his captain to me, “that’s all the conception a
lot of them have of why they are here.”
I went to the great cantonments expecting to see a great body of
Americans. I found thousands of Italians, Poles, Russians, Ruma-
nians, Greeks, and others—all potential Americans, to be sure, but
with a long way to travel yet! In each of several camps of 30,000 to
40,000 men I found 4,000 to 5,000 who understand little English and
speak still less. Of course this proportion would be determined in
each cantonment by the districts from which the men came.
I talked with scores of colonels and other officers, and all agreed
that this was one of their greatest problems. One regiment had about
eighty per cent “foreigners.” Many had fifty per cent. Whole
companies were made up mostly of Poles or some other foreign na-
tionality. Imagine these fellows from the slums of Chicago, Mil-
waukee, Detroit, Cleveland, New York, getting off their trains, being
taken to camp, marched to their quarters, given instructions which
they could little understand, and beginning immediately a life as new
and strange to them as aéroplaning would be for you and me! . .
To build real soldiers out of this material is a slow process, requiring
infinite patience. One captain told me this as a joke on himself:
“To-day when drilling my men I was provoked so many times by
one fellow who refused to listen or obey orders that I sailed into him
before the whole company. After I had completed what I thought
was a rather impressive speech one of the non-commissioned officers
saluted and said, ‘Excuse me, Captain, but that man doesn’t under-
stand a word you're saying!’”
When a new crowd of men comes to camp it is no uncommon sight
730 Buckling on the Armor [z918
to find men wandering aimlessly around in their off hours, hopelessly
lost. They do not know the number of their regiment, company, or
barracks, and in a camp of five thousand acres and more all barracks
look alike. One of these huge cantonments is a maze for any new-
comer, even for the educated American who does not hesitate to in-
quire his way.
Fancy some of these foreigners, many of whom have not even their
“first papers,” grasping quickly the fundamentals of our government,
the real meaning of our war, and the bewildering nomenclature and
courtesies of the army camp! It all seems so impossible. One after-
noon I had the privilege of being in one of the barracks while a colonel
was explaining to his captains the exact way everything should be
arranged. “Exact” hardly describes it. Of course the bed had to be
made just so, the poncho had to be folded exactly right at the foot,
the mess-kit had to be hung on a certain nail, a few things were per-
mitted to be visible, the rest “under the mattress,” etc. There by the
door stood a dozen foreigners, just arrived, who could hardly speak a
word of English, and my thoughts went beyond them to the boarding-
houses and industrial plants whence they had come. Yet to-morrow
these same foreigners would be following out these same strict orders,
making their own beds with a precision that would dismay the tidiest
housekeeper. Talk about raising the standard of living—in the
army camps it is done with one stroke of the pen, overnight! A few
days later I saw those same “rookies,” in army garb, drilling, and I
could barely recognize them. There is something profoundly in-
spiring about it all. At the same time there is something very pathetic
about the ignorance of these men. The officers, on the whole, are
showing splendid patience and a fine spirit in the face of great diff-
culties.
There are humorous as well as pathetic stories. Joe came in after
hours one night and was greeted by the guard in the usual manner:
“Halt! Advance and be recognized!” In answer to the question,
“What’s your name?” Joe replied, “Ah, you no guess it in a thou-
sand years.” He probably went to the guard-house, and, as one colonel
said, ‘“There are many there because of ignorance rather than vicious-
ness.”
At Camp Upton one evening a major was stopped by a “Halt!”
from the sentry. The major stopped, the sentry advanced and again
No. 174] Foreigners in the Arrny 737
said, “Halt.” “Well, what do you want?” inquired the major, with
rising anger. “Halt! Now I think about time you run—I shoot!”
Of course the sentry was taken to task, and it was discovered that he
had misunderstood the order to shoot if any man refused to halt after
being ordered to do so three times. The major however, sympathized
with the foreign sentry and admitted that he was a good sport in at
least telling himtorun!.. .
The Roberts method, as it has been called, takes a group of for-
eigners absclutely ignorant of the English language and teaches them
all equally weli, even though there may be a dozen nationalities in
the class at the same time. There are three fundamental principles
of the method: First, that the ear and not the eye is the organ of lan-
guage. That is to say, we learned our native tongue by hearing it
spoken by our parents and others. We did not learn from books
until long after we had learned to speak. The Association experts,
therefore, realize that they must first teach the foreigners (who, as
far as English is concerned, are really children) how to speak. The
reading and writing come later in the lesson.
Second, that each lesson must deal with a common experience of
every-day life.
Third, that each sentence must suggest what the next sentence
shall be. That is, the sentences must be logically arranged and all
bear on the main theme.
A teacher, therefore, proceeds as follows: He says to his men, “You
say this after me—Awake.” The class in unison then repeats the
word, which as yet they do not understand the meaning of, and the
teacher corrects their pronunciation. He then gives them a second
word—“open.”” They repeat this. He follows with “look,” “find,”
“see.” Very quickly the men memorize these five words in the order
given, until they say them without the teacher’s help. Incidentally,
you will note that the men have been learning verbs, the vitally active
part of each sentence. The teacher then uses these verbs in sentences,
acting each sentence slowly and with dramatic precision: “I awake
from sleep.” “I open my eyes.” “TI look for my watch.” “T find my
watch.” “TI see what time it is.”
In from five to ten minutes the men memorize perfectly these five
sentences. They understand the meaning, because the teacher care-
fully enacts each word and sentence. The teacher then has his pupils
738 Buckling on the Armor [1918
memorize the second set of sentences: “It is six o’clock.” “I must
get up.” “I throw back the bedclothes.” “I get out of bed.” “Iput
on my pants.” “Iput on my socks and shoes.”
And so on through the process of getting up in the morning. If an
hour to an hour and a half is allowed for the lesson, about half of the
time is well spent in this acting out of the lesson and memorizing. It
is amazing how quickly men really understand and can repeat the
lesson without the teacher’s help. When that point is reached the
teacher exhibits a large chart upon which the lesson is printed. The
men then connect what they have seen dramatized and what they have
memorized with what they now see in print. Thus they say the lesson
from memory while looking at the printed words with the result that
they very quickly learn to recognize the printed forms of the words
already learned. Then each student is given a lesson sheet to keep—on
one side the lesson in print and the reverse side in script. They then
read in unison both sides of the sheet many times until they are
actually, in spite of themselves, learning to read. . . .
After a class the other night I heard a young Italian say to his
teacher: “Teacher, I want thank you. Before I came here I no have
chance to learn any much English. Now I learn whole lot, I be better
soldier.” .
Most people do not recognize that there are over 40,000 native
illiterates in the camps, many of them from the southern mountains.
. . . An Association secretary discovered one of these men crying
himself to sleep in his barracks. When asked what was the matter he
replied, “I don’t like it here in France.” It took considerable time
for the secretary to convince the man that he was not in France, but
in reality only a few hundred miles from home. The secretary did
everything he could for the man. He saw he was surrounded with
helpful associates, and in a few days he was in a much happier frame
of mind Msi.
There are in America to-day approximately 15,000,000 foreign-born
and 20,000,000 more of foreign parentage. There are only about
5,000,000 foreign-born voters, and fully 5,000,000 who speak very
little English. More than 3,000,000 aliens of military age are exempt
from draft because not naturalized. In the face of facts like these
let us see to it that every agency in every city in America be com-
mandeered to help educate and inspire with loyalty these men from
No. 175] Training Camp Activities 739
other lands, whether aliens or citizens and whether or not they are to
be drafted!
Fred H. Rindge, Jr., Uncle Sam’s Adopted Nephews, in Harper’s Magazine, July,
1918 (New York), 281-289 passim.
— p -
175. Training Camp Activities (1918)
BY RAYMOND B. FOSDICK
Fosdick, a lawyer by profession, was Chairman of the Commission on Training
Camp Activities of the War and Navy Departments; and, later, civilian aide to
Gen. Pershing in France, 1919. Beyond all experience in previous wars, plans were
organized to care for the social side of the soldiers’ life. See also No. 186 below.
Y a comprehensive recreational and educational program, the
commissions have surrounded our fighters with such clean and
wholesome influences as they conceived a democracy to owe to its
fighting men. The undertaking was experimental. It was perhaps
the largest social program ever undertaken. It was the first time a
government had ever combined educational and ethical elements with
disciplinary forces, in the production of a fighting organism. . .
Broadly, the work of the commissions has fallen under two general
heads. The first embraces a vast positive program set up to compete
with the twin evils of alcohol and prostitution. The more perfect
its development, the less the necessity for the other phase of the organ-
ization—the suppressive work. Working together to assist in supply-
ing the former are the agencies that, already in existence, have been
accorded official recognition and placed under the diiection of the
commissions.
The club life of the cantonment, for instance, is in the capable hands
of the Young Men’s Christian Association, the Knights of Columbus,
and the Jewish Welfare Board... .
The buildings brought into the camps by these organizations are so
distributed, as to be easily available to the greatest numbers of men.
A typical hut or bungalow presents a reassuring picture for those
who have fears as to the social well-being of the uniformed men.
Groups of men will always be found there occupying the rocking
740 Buckling on the Armor [1918
chairs and big arm chairs, smoking, playing games, or reading. A
victrola and a piano are included in the equipment of each building
and the men make full use of them. Around the entire wall space
writing desks are built in, and these are never entirely deserted. It
is estimated that more than a million and a half letters daily are
written by the soldiers and sailors on the stationery that is furnished
free by the Y. M. C. A. alone. The men soon learn that the building
secretary is available day or night, and is not only willing but anxious
to serve them as counsellor or friend. . . .
Another important agency codperating in this work within the
camps, is the American Library Association, to which has been
delegated the task of solving the problem of the soldiers’ and sailors’
reading matter. This organization has undertaken the seemingly
impossible task of seeing that there is always a good book within reach
of the fighting man. A special library building has been erected or
is in the course of being erected in each of the army cantonments.
These are in charge of trained librarians. The entire work is carried
on under the general supervision of Dr. Herbert Putnam, Librarian
of Congress, who has been appointed General Director of the Library
War Service. . .
The library work in camp is linked up definitely with the edura-
tional program being carried on direct by the commissions. In many
divisions gathered in by the first draft, the percentage of men who
could not speak a word of English was appalling. In the Syracuse
camp, there was one regiment who could not understand the commands
given them. Men from the Kentucky and Tennessee mountains
could not read or write. In every camp in the United States classes
in English, French, spelling, reading, writing and primary arithmetic
were started, and are now being conducted. Two hundred thousand
men are studying the French language at the present time, in classes
run under the direction of the Commissions on Training Camp Activ-
ities. Vocational training classes are being carried forward; in fact,
in every camp there are classes on certain evenings of every week
representing all subjects from first lessons in spoken French to lessons
in electrical engineering. In this connection, the educational ma-
chinery of the Y. M. C. A. is being largely utilized... .
The Young Women’s Christian Association, by establishing the
hostess houses in camp, has solved one of the biggest problems with
No. 175] Training Camp Activities 741
which military authorities have had to contend,—that of women
visitors to camp. In the old days they had to stand on windy corners,
or parade the often wet and muddy streets: there was no place for them
to go. Now they can go to this homelike spot and talk with their
men friends or relatives amid pleasant surroundings. There have al-
ready been seventy-six hostess houses erected within the army and
navy camps, and more are in the course of construction. .
On visiting days, the hostess house is filled with groups of soldiers
and civilians. Some of the old army officers did not like the idea
of the hostess house at first. “Send along anything you want to,”
they told the commissions, “but keep these women away.” However,
no personal hardship or discomforts can keep them away, so long as
there is a chance of their seeing their men who are soon to go to the
front. They come by the thousands. They come penniless, often-
times. They come with stories of misery and want. The hostess
house is a recognition of their right to come and the hostess house
is playing a large part in conserving the camp morale. The officers
no less than the men are coming to look upon it as indispensable.
Often now we hear from those who were loudest in objecting to the
idea. They say that they are being discriminated against; that
some other camp is getting a second hostess house or a special house
for taking care of colored women visitors while they have only
OMe) IT.
The civilian public comes into contact with the soldier and the
sailor for the most part when they are on leave. It is this phase of
their soldiering in which the commissions take the greatest interest,
for their reactions to the removal of restraint are apt to be the antith-
esis of those under the restrictions of camp life. Discipline, char-
acter, and ideals must stand the strain of an afternoon or a week-
end away from the cantonment, for on those largely depend the
physical welfare of the army and navy. Thus, it is obvious that the
men must have “somewhere to go.” There has been a gratifying
response to the demand made on the civilian population in their
behalf. The towns and cities adjacent to the camps have assimilated
the soldier and sailor population in a remarkably effective manner.
Instead of patronage, the men have been given genuine hospitality,
and they have responded in kind. That this has been brought about
hy a national society working along almost scientifically exact lines,
442 Buckling on the Armor [1918
is a striking commentary on the personality that may go with the
efficient organization of social work. Their well-tested theories and
principles had to be applied to an entirely new set of conditions.
The personal hospitality of those who have entertained the soldiers
and sailors, is one of the most heartening results of the work of the
commissions, for it has developed closer ties between the men and
the communities and acted as a conservator of home ideals. The war
camp community workers as well as the workers back of the hostess
house idea have found that one of the greatest sociological needs in
training camp life, is the opportunity to see and talk with women. The
boys want the feminine society they were used to back home; many
of them want a bit of mothering; and the people of this country are
doing a great work in seeing that they get this feminine society of
theright- kinda a
Nearly all of the sports known to American life are carried on in
the camps, and all of the men are not only permitted, but are encour-
aged to participate freely. A continually-growing emphasis is heing
placed especially in the army upon the semi-military sports. Trencb-
rushing, wall-scaling, grenade-throwing and boxing are all being
promoted. Boxing is conducted under the advisory direction of the
most eminent exponents of the art,—men calculated to arouse the
enthusiasm of our fighters in the making... .
Besides the better known sports, such as baseball and football,
there is a great variety of games such as volley ball, push ball, med-
icine ball, cross-country running, tennis, fencing and swimming.
Laughter-provoking games are played regularly by great numbers of
soldiers and sailors. This is important, for good humor is one of the
vital elements of discipline. . . .
Supplying the means for theatrical entertainments is an obvious
part of the program which has undertaken to create a rational social
life for the men. Every army camp now has its well-equipped modern
liberty theatre building, and the best Broadway attractions are
being booked throughout the circuit so that the men have all they
would get in New York... .
The young American’s instinctive preference for sound and healthy
occupations and recreations, has been met on every side by all this
positive, constructive work. Strict repressive measures have at the
same time been taken against alcohol and prostitution, and vice and
No. 176] Broomstick Preparedness 743
the opportunities for intemperance—those factors deadly to military
efficiency have been reduced toa minimum... .
The war is going to be won by manpower. We have profited by
the experience of other nations and have reduced to that small inescap-
able minimum, the percentage of men placed on the ineffective list
through immorality. It is no longer news that eighty-nine red light
districts have been closed and the venereal disease rate of our army
and navy has been reduced more than fifty per cent since the begin-
ning of the war. These are the most obvious achievements in the con-
servation of manhood and manpower. In the last analysis, the whole
suppressive program but prepares the way for the building up of a
fighting force with such ideals as will stand the strain of the great
encounter on the other side and bring them back better citizens for
the experience. To make men fit for fighting—and after—is just
plain efficiency plus.
Raymond B. Fosdick, in Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social
Science (Philadelphia, September, 1918), LX XIX, 131-142 passim.
176. Broomstick Preparedness (1918)
BY EX-PRESIDENT THEODORE ROOSEVELT
Roosevelt’s own military and administrative career demonstrated the expediency
of being prepared for emergencies. Inefficiency he would not tolerate. General
Wood came near being the Republican candidate for the Presidency in 1920, and
was subsequently appointed Governor of the Philippines.—See No. 111 above.
STUDY of the American army for the year succeeding our
entry into the war is a study of the effects of broomstick pre-
paredness. All who defend this type of preparedness are themselves,
however amicable and well-meaning, broomstick apologists.
Over eighteen months have now passed since we admitted that
we were at war, and over twenty months since the Germans frankly
began war upon us. With our immense manpower, wealth, and re-
sources, the natural fighting qualities of our men and the business
energy and the mechanical efficiency of our people, we have now
developed a force that has made us a highly important factor in the
744 Buckling on the Armor [1918
war. Seventeen months after we entered the war we at last had a
sufficiency of well-trained troops to enable General Pershing for
the first time to take part in the war with a separate army, an army
such as the French and the English had. But this army was still
very small in size, compared to either the French or British armies.
Moreover it was able to act only because it had obtained from our
allies the cannon, airplanes, tanks, machine-guns, and the gas
necessary in modern warfare. Without what we have thus obtained
from our allies we would have been absolutely helpless. But the
gallantry and fighting efficiency of our men, and the fact that several
hundred thousand are now fit for use at the front, have made us
already of very real weight against the Germans, for when the scales
are almost trembling in the balance a relatively small weight of effort
will determine the outcome. Therefore, the large number of well-
meaning persons who are very forgetful, and who like to tickle their
vanity by refusing to face what is unpleasant, tend already to say
that our unpreparedness did not amount to anything after all, and
that all things are all right, and that nobody must speak about the
wrongs of the past. For this reason it is essential that our people
should know just what our shortcomings were.
We cannot learn about these shortcomings from military officers.
The administration by its treatment of General Wood has rendered
it a work of the highest danger for any American army officer to tell
the truth that ought to be told. General Wood, two years before we
went into the war, and again one year before we went into the war,
appeared before the Congressional Military Committees and set
forth our needs. When at the end of last winter he returned from his
stay in France, he told us what ought at once to be done. The ad-
ministration in every case refused to profit by what he had testified,
and yet in every case the events have made good everything he said.
It is to General Wood that we owe primarily the Plattsburg officers’
training-camps in 1915 and 1916. These Plattsburg training-camps
did a work that cannot be overestimated, in providing officers; and
it was the one really effective bit of preparation on our part. All
that General Wood thus advised and thus did was of the very highest
value to the country. Instead of rewarding him for it, the adminis-
tration has punished him in the way hardest to bear for a gallant
and patriotic soldier. This has represented not only a cruel injus-
ome
-
No. 176] Broomstick Preparedness 745
tice to him, but a deeply unpatriotic refusal to meet the country’s
needs.
Therefore, I am not at liberty to quote the first-hand testimony I
have had as to some of the vital shortcomings in the administration
of the War Department and the army during the first eighteen months
of the war.
But in the camps I visited I saw some things so evident that no
harm can come to any officer from my speaking of them; and there
are some things which are now matters of common knowledge, al-
though the War Department did everything it could to keep them
from the knowledge of the people.
In the fall of 1917 the enormous majority of our men in the encamp-
ments were drilling with broomsticks or else with rudely whittled
guns. As late as the beginning of December they had in the camps
almost only wooden machine-guns and wooden field-cannon. In the
camps I saw barrels mounted on sticks on which zealous captains
were endeavoring to teach their men how to ride a horse. At that
time we had one or two divisions of well-trained infantry in France—
which would have been simply lapped up if placed against the army
of any formidable military power. At that time, eight months after
we had gone to war, the army we had gathered in the cantonments
had neither the rifles, the machine-guns, the cannon, the tanks, nor
the airplanes which would have enabled them to make any fight at
all against any army of any military power that could have landed
on our shores. It would have been as helpless against an invading
army as so many savages armed with stone-headed axes. We were
wholly unable to defend ourselves a year after we had gone to war
We owed our safety only to the English, French, and Italian fleets
and armies.
The cause was our refusal to prepare in advance. President Wil-
son’s message of December, 1914, in which he ridiculed those who
advocated preparedness, was part of the cause. We paid the price
later with broomstick rifles, log-wood cannon, soldiers without shoes,
and epidemics of pneumonia in the camps. We are paying the price
now in shortage of coal and congestion of transportation, and in the
double cost of necessary war-supplies. We are paying the price and
shall pay the price in the shape of taxes and a national debt at least
twice as large as would have been the case if with forethought and
740 Buckling on the Armor [1918
wisdom we had prepared in advance. We have paid the price in the
blood of tens of thousands of gallant men. The refusal to prepare,
and the price we now pay because of the refusal, stand in the relation
of cause and effect. . . .
The attitude of the War Department during the first months of the
war was shown by the remark of one of the high officials to the effect
that the delay of a few months was “a perfectly endurable delay.”
This remark was made with all the complacency of the butterfly on
the fence to the toad under the harrow. Others paid with their blood
for our delay. The German submarine note came on January 31,
1917; and within the next two months an alert and efficient War De-
partment would have had every particle of its programme minutely
mapped out and well on the way to execution. As a matter of fact,
nothing was really begun until late in August. . . .
Every American worth his salt feels exultant pride in the splendid
courage and high efficiency of our soldiers in France. From General
Pershing down they have made our country, and us who dwell therein,
forever their debtors.
It is well to pay these men the homage of words, but what really
counts is the homage of deeds. It is a dreadful thing to send our fine
and gallant boys to battle, and yet to deny them the formidable
weapons and machines of war, the lack of which must be paid for by
pouring out their blood like water.
As a nation we cannot be acquitted of this wrong to our fightirg
men whom we have sent to the front. No finer fighting men were
ever known, and their deeds are deeds of deathless honor. But our
government, by its failure to prepare in advance and by its delay,
waste, and mismanagement after the war began, has made a record
that is not pleasant for Americans to contemplate. Let our people
never forget that if we had chosen to prepare in advance we would
probably have ended the war in ninety days after we entered it in 1917;
and that if when General Leonard Wood returned from France at the
close of last winter the administration had heeded his report and had
done as he then advised and as every patriotic man of knowledge
and insight then hoped, we would have been further advanced at the
beginning of the summer than we are now at the end of the fall. Nine-
tenths of wisdom is being wise in time.
When, on February 3, we broke off diplomatic relations with Ger-
No. 176] Broomstick Preparedness 747
many the war really began. From that moment avoidable, unwar-
ranted delay was as inexcusable as it is now. The day before Mr.
Elon Hooker had laid before the authorities at Washington an offer
to turn over his entire plant to the service of the government, this
being the plant better fitted than any other in the United States to
undertake the manufacture of war gas and the development of new
and more formidable kinds of gas on a gigantic scale. His request
was refused. A year elasped before any serious effort was made to
undo any of the effects of the error. At the same time we had the
means for building enormous quantities of excellent machine-guns.
The War Department refused to avail itself of the opportunity and
dallied for about eighteen months in developing a new type of gun,
leaving us meanwhile without any. We dawdied in similar fashion
over the tanks. We have not yet built any field-guns, and are still
dependent upon what the French can give us. It is necessary merely
to refer to the appalling delay in the air service where $640,000,000
were appropriated and largely expended without securing any tangible
result whatever on the field of battle until we had been at war nearly
a year and a half.
. . . After a year of war, when the great German drive began, our
fighting army able to take part in the active work at the front was
actually smaller than that of Belgium. In the next six months we
were able to place in the field an army respectable in numbers and
admirable in quality; and we were able to do this only because, in
view of the breakdown of our shipping programme, the British fur-
nished their ships, so that 60 per cent of the tonnage used in ferrying
our soldiers across was British. But we were able to furnish only the
men. We had only the field-artillery the French furnished us. We
got uniforms from the English. We did not have a single fighting-
plane of American make, and naturally the French did not give us
their best planes. We had very few American machine-guns or auto
rifles. We had almost no gas. We had almost no tanks, and those
we did have were furnished by our allies. We now have a few admi-
rable naval guns, admirably handled, and a number of excellent bomb-
ing airplanes of our own manufacture.
The business efficiency of our people is great. Its manpower is
great. Its resources are enormous. Had the administration, with an
eye single to our country’s needs, devoted its whole energy to speeding
748 Buckling on the Armor [1918
up the war, and abandoned all thought of politics during the war,
the peace of overwhelming victory would by this time have been won.
But this was not done. Never before in our history has the adminis-
tration in power during a war drawn party lines as sharply as in the
present war. No one but an active partisan adherent of the admin-
istration has been given any position of the slightest political responsi-
bility; and the test in the appointment of even these, as established
by President Wilson, in his messages concerning the election or re-
election of congressmen, is loyalty to the administration rather than
loyalty to the country. . . .
Theodore Roosevelt, The Great Adventure (New York, Scribner’s, 1918), 143-
157 passim.
CHAPTER XXXIIT— OVER THERE
177. An Embattled Press Correspondent (1914)
BY RICHARD HARDING DAVIS
Davis, a famous correspondent, had followed many armies, reported many wars,
before this one. His employment was perhaps as risky as any in which a neutral
could be engaged.—General bibliography on the war, for all articles in this chapter,
is given with No. 171 above.
HAD started with the column at seven o’clock, and at noon
an automobile, with flags flying and the black eagle of the
staff enamelled on the door, came speeding back from the front. In
it was a very blond and distinguished-looking officer of high rank and
many decorations. He used a single eye-glass, and his politeness and
his English were faultless. He invited me to accompany him to the
general staff.
That was the first intimation I had that I was in danger. I saw they
were giving me far too much attention. I began instantly to work
to set myself free, and there was not a minute for the next twenty-
four hours that I was not working. Before I stepped into the car I had
decided upon my line of defence. . . . The blond officer smiled un-
easily and with his single glass studied the sky. When we reached the
staff he escaped from me with the alacrity of one released from a
disagreeable and humiliating duty. The staff were at luncheon,
seated in their luxurious motor-cars or on the grass by the side of the
road. On the other side of the road the column of dust-covered gray
ghosts were being rushed past us. The staff, in dress uniforms, flow-
ing cloaks, and gloves, belonged to a different race. They knew that.
Among themselves they were like priests breathing incense. When-
ever one of them spoke to another they saluted, their heels clicked,
their bodies bent at the belt line.
One of them came to where, in the middle of the road, I was stranded
749
750 Over There (1914
and trying not to feel as lonely as I looked. He was much younger
than myself and dark and handsome. His face was smooth-shaven,
his figure tall, lithe, and alert. He wore a uniform of light blue and
silver that clung to him and high boots of patent leather. His waist
was like a girl’s and, as though to show how supple he was, he kept
continually bowing and shrugging his shoulders and in elegant protest
gesticulating with his gloved hands. He should have been a moving-
picture actor. He reminded me of Anthony Hope’s fascinating but
wicked Rupert of Hentzau. He certainly was wicked, and I got to
hate him as I never imagined it possible to hate anybody. He had
been told off to dispose of my case, and he delighted in it. He en-
joyed it as a cat enjoys playing with a mouse. As actors say, he saw
himself in the part. He “ate” it.
“You are an English officer out of uniform,” he began. “You have
been taken inside our lines.” He pointed his forefinger at my stomach
and wiggled his thumb. “And you know what that means!”
I saw playing the fool with him would be waste of time.
“I followed your army,” I told him, “because it’s my business to
follow armies and because yours is the best-looking army I ever saw.”
He made me one of his mocking bows.
“We thank you,” he said, grinning. ‘‘But you have seen too much.”
“I haven’t seen anything,” I said, “that everybody in Brussels
hasn’t seen for three days.”
He shook his head reproachfully and with a gesture signified the
group of officers.
“You have seen enough in this road,” he said, “to justify us in
shooting you now.” ...
When Rupert of Hentzau returned the other officers were with him,
and, fortunately for me, they spoke or understood English. For the
rest of the day what followed was like a legal argument. It was as
cold-blooded as a game of bridge. Rupert of Hentzau wanted an
English spy shot for his supper; just as he might have desired a grilled
bone. He showed no personal animus, and, I must say for him, that
he conducted the case for the prosecution without heat or anger. He
mocked me, grilled and taunted me, but he was always charmingly
politek <4
. . . The points he made against me were that my German pass was
signed neither by General Jarotsky nor by Lieutenant Geyer, but only
No. 177] An Embattled Press Correspondent 751
stamped, and that any rubber stamp could be forged; that my Ameri-
can passport had not been issued at Washington, but in London,
where an Englishman might have imposed upon our embassy; and
that in the photograph pasted on the passport I was wearing the uni-
form of a British officer. I explained that the photograph was taken
eight years ago, and that the uniform was one I had seen on the west
coast of Africa, worn by the West African Field Force. Because it
was unlike any known military uniform, and as cool and comfortable
as a golf jacket, I had had it copied. But since that time it had been
adopted by the English Brigade of Guards and the Territorials. I
knew it sounded like fiction; but it was quite true.
Rupert of Hentzau smiled delightedly.
“Do you expect us to believe that?” he protested.
“Listen,” I said, “If you could invent an explanation for that
uniform as quickly as I told you that one, standing in a road with
eight officers trying to shoot you, you would be the greatest general in
Germany.”
That made the others laugh; and Rupert retorted: “Very weli,
then, we will concede that the entire British army has changed its
uniform to suit your photograph. But if you are not an officer, why,
in the photograph, are you wearing war ribbons? ”
I said the war ribbons were in my favor, and I pointed out that no
officer of any one country could have been in the different campaigns
for which the ribbons were issued.
“They prove,” I argued, “that I am a correspondent, for only a
correspondent could have been in wars in which his own country was
not engaged.”
I thought I had scored; but Rupert instantly turned my own wit-
ness against me.
“Ora military attaché,” he said. At that they all smiled and nodded
knowingly.
He followed this up by saying, accusingly, that the hat and clothes
I was then wearing were English. The clothes were English, but I
knew he did not know that, and was only guessing; and there were no
marks on them. About my hat I was not certain. It wasa felt Alpine
hat, and whether I had bought it in London or New York I could not
remember. Whether it was evidence for or against I could not be
sure. So I took it off and began to fan myself with it, hoping to get a
752 Over There [1914
look at the name of the maker. But with the eyes of the young
prosecuting attorney fixed upon me, I did not dare take a chance.
- Then, to aid me, a German aëroplane passed overhead, and those wh»
were giving me the third degree looked up. I stopped fanning myseif
and cast a swift glance inside the hat. To my intense satisfaction I
read, stamped on the leather lining: “Knox, New York.”
I put the hat back on my head and a few minutes later pulled it
off and said: “Now, for instance, my hat. If I were an Englishman
would I cross the ocean to New York to buy a hat?”
It was all like that. They would move away and whisper together,
and I would try to guess what questions they were preparing. I had
to arrange my defence without knowing in what way they would
try to trip me, and I had to think faster than I ever have thought
before. I had no more time to be scared, or to regret my past sins,
than had a man in a quicksand. So far as I could make out, they
were divided in opinion concerning me. Rupert of Hentzau, who was
the adjutant or the chief of staff, had only one simple thought, which
was to shoot me. Others considered me a damn fool; I could hear them
laughing and saying: “ Er ist ein dummer Mensch.” And others thought
that whether I was a fool or not, or an American or an Englishman,
was not the question; I had seen too much and should be put away.
I felt if, instead of having Rupert act as my interpreter, I could per-
sonally speak to the general I might talk my way out of it, but Rupert
assured me that to set me free the Count de Schwerin lacked authority,
and that my papers, which were all against me, must be submitted
to the general of the army corps, and we would not reach him until
midnight.
“And then!—” he would exclaim, and he would repeat his panto-
mime of pointing his forefinger at my stomach and wiggling his thumb.
He was very popular with me... .
As it grew later I persuaded myself they did not mean to act until
morning, and I stretched out on the straw and tried to sleep. At
midnight I was startled by the light of an electric torch. It was
strapped to the chest of an officer, who ordered me to get up and come
with him. He spoke only German and he seemed very angry. The
owner of the house and the old cook had shown him to my room, but
they stood in the shadow without speaking. Nor, fearing I might
compromise them—for I could not see why, except for one purpose,
No. 177] An Embattled Press Correspondent 753
they were taking me out into the night—did I speak to them. We
got into another motor-car and in silence drove north from Ligne
down a country road to a great chateau that stood in a magnificent
park. Something had gone wrong with the lights of the chateau,
and its hall was lit only by candles that showed soldiers sleeping like
dead men on bundles of wheat and others leaping up and down the
marble stairs. They put me in a huge armchair of silk and gilt, with
two of the gray ghosts to guard me, and from the hall, when the doors
of the drawing-room opened, I could see a long table on which were
candles in silver candle-sticks or set on plates, and many maps and
half-empty bottles of champagne. Around the table, standing or
seated, and leaning across the maps, were staff-officers in brilliant
uniforms. They were much older men and of higher rank than any
I had yet seen. They were eating, drinking, gesticulating. In spite
of the tumult, some, in utter weariness, were asleep. It was like a
picture of 1870 by Detaille or De Neuville. Apparently, at last I
had reached the headquarters of the mysterious general. I had ar-
rived at what, for a suspected spy, was an inopportune moment. The
Germans themselves had been surprised, or somewhere south of us
had met with a reverse, and the air was vibrating with excitement
and something very like panic. Outside, at great speed and with
sirens shrieking, automobiles were arriving, and I could hear the
officers shouting: “ Die Englischen kommen!”
To make their reports they flung themselves up the steps, the
electric torches, like bull’s-eye lanterns, burning holes in the night.
Seeing a civilian under guard, they would stare and ask questions.
Even when they came close, owing to the light in my eyes, I could
not see them. Sometimes, in a half circle, there would be six or eight
of the electric torches blinding me, and from behind them voices bark-
ing at me with strange, guttural noises. Much they said I could not
understand, but they made it quite clear it was no fit place for an
Englishman.
When the door from the drawing-room opened and Rupert of
Hentzau appeared, I was almost glad to see him.
Whenever he spoke to me he always began or ended his sentence
with “Mr. Davis.” He gave it emphasis and meaning which was in-
tended to show that he knew it was not my name. I would not have
thought it possible to put so much insolence into two innocent words.
754 Over There [rors
It was as though he said: “Mr. Davis, alias Jimmy Valentine.” He
certainly would have made a great actor.
“Mr. Davis,” he said, “you are free.”
Richard Harding Davis, With the Allies (New York, Scribner’s, 1914), 45-68
passim.
178. The Cathedral of Rheims (1915)
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF EMILE VERHAUREN
BY JOYCE KILMER
Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918) was a graduate of Columbia University. He was on
the staff of the New York Times Sunday Magazine and Review of Books from 1913,
and contributed regularly to various periodicals. In 1917 he enlisted in the 165th
U. S. Infantry, and was killed in action on August 1, 1918. He had published three
volumes of verse, and Literature in the Making (1917). Rheims cathedral, like many
other ancient architectural treasures of France and Belgium, was irreparably dam-
aged hy German artillery fire.
E who walks through the meadows of Champagne
At noon in Fall, when leaves like gold appear,
Sees it draw near
Like some great mountain set upon the plain,
From radiant dawn until the close of day,
Nearer it grows
To him who goes
Across the country. When tall towers lay
Their shadowy pall
Upon his way,
He enters, where
The solid stone is hollowed deep by all
Its centuries of beauty and of prayer.
Ancient French temple! thou whose hundred kings
Watch over thee, emblazoned on thy walls,
Tell me, within thy memory-hallowed halls
What chant of triumph, or what war-song rings?
Thou hast known Clovis and his Frankish train,
No. 178] The Cathetral of Rheims 755
Whose mighty hand Saint Remy’s hand did keep.
And in thy spacious vault perhaps may sleep
An echo of the voice of Charlemagne.
For God thou hast known fear, when from His side
Men wandered, seeking alien shrines and new,
But still the sky was bountiful and blue
And thou wast crowned with France’s love and pride.
Sacred thou art, from pinnacle to base;
And in thy panes of gold and scarlet glass
The setting sun sees thousandfold his face;
Sorrow and joy, in stately silence pass
Across thy walls, the shadow and the light;
Around thy lofty pillars, tapers white
Illuminate, with delicate sharp flames,
The brows of saints with venerable names,
And in the night erect a fiery wall.
A great but silent fervour burns in all
Those simple folk who kneel, pathetic, dumb,
And know that down below, beside the Rhine—
Cannon, horses, soldiers, flags in line—
With blare of trumpets, mighty armies come.
Suddenly, each knows fear;
Swift rumours pass, that every one must hear,
The hostile banners blaze against the sky
And by the embassies mobs rage and cry,
Now war has come, and peace is at an end.
On Paris town the German troops descend.
They are turned back, and driven to Champagne.
And now, as to so many weary men,
The glorious temple gives them welcome, when
It meets them at the bottom of the plain.
At once, they set their cannon in its way.
There is no gable now, nor wall
That does not suffer, night and day,
As shot and shell in crushing torrents fall.
756
Over There [xorg
‘The stricken tocsin quivers through the tower;
The triple nave, the apse, the lonely choir
Are circled, hour by hour,
With thundering bands of fire
And Death is scattered broadcast among men.
And then
That which was splendid with baptismal grace;
The stately arches soaring into space,
The transepts, columns, windows gray and gold,
The organ, in whose tones the ocean rolled,
The crypts, of mighty shades the dwelling places,
The Virgin’s gentle hands, the Saints’ pure faces,
All, even the pardoning hands of Christ the Lord
Were struck and broken by the wanton sword
Of sacrilegious lust.
O beauty slain, O glory in the dust!
Strong walls of faith, most basely overthrown!
The crawling flames, like adders glistening
Ate the white fabric of this lovely thing.
Now from its soul arose a piteous moan,
The soul that always loved the just and fair.
Granite and marble loud their woe confessed,
The silver monstrances that Popes had blessed,
The chalices and lamps and crosiers rare
Were seared and twisted by a flaming breath;
The horror everywhere did range and swell,
The guardian Saints into this furnace fell,
Their bitter tears and screams were stilled in death.
Around the flames armed hosts are skirmishing,
The burning sun reflects the lurid scene;
The German army, fighting for its life,
Rallies its torn and terrified left wing;
And, as they near this place
The imperial eagles see
Before them in their flight,
No. 179] American Ambulance Ficld Service 757
Here, in the solemn night,
The old cathedral, to the years to be
Showing, with wounded arms, their own disgrace.
Joyce Kilmer, Poems, Essays and Letters (copyright 1918, George H. Doran Co.
Publishers), 165-168.
179. American Ambulance Field Service (1916)
BY JOHN MASEFIELD
Here a famous English poet reports a service in which many young Americans
offered their help to the Allies, as non-combatants, prior to the entry of the United
States into the war.
feet HE real work of the section begins with darkness, when
the roads can no longer be seen by observers in the sky.
After supper, in the last of the light, the ambulance-cars are made
ready; the two drivers in each car put on their steel helmets and take
their gas masks, and the convoy (or a part of it, according to the need
of the service and the severity of the fighting) moves out, car by car,
toward the Postes de Secours, where they will find the wounded.
Soine camps are so far from the front that the first part of the journey
up can be done with headlights. All roads leading to the front are
crowded with men or wagons going up or coming down. Im a little
while after leaving camp the ambulances run into the full stream of
the relief and revictualing. It is the rule upon all roads in France
that troops and vehicles shall keep well to the right, so that there
shall be room for the column going as well as for the column return-
ing. The day is busy enough upon the roads well back from the
front, though those farther up are quiet. But at night this changes,
and in the darkness the life on the real roads begins. It is difficult
to describe this night life on the roads, since so little of it can be seen;
yet on first moving out with the cars, before darkness has fallen and
the headlights are doused, enough is caught to show that in modern
war there is no splendor of movement or of position, as in the old
wars, when divisions of cavalry charged and the front of a battle
advanced as one man, but that there is still something distinctive
758 Over There [1916
about it by which it will be remembered. Old wars are remembered,
perhaps, for their glitter or their crash, for something big in their
commanders or fatal in their results. This war will perhaps be re-
membered for the monotony and the patience behind the lines.
There alone is the imagination struck. There, on the midnight roads,
is the visible struggle; there the nations are passing and repassing to
the defense of the gates, and, to many, the image of this war will be
not, as before, a spangled man or anything splendid, but simply the
convoy of many wagons, driven by tired men, going on and on along
the darkness of a road, in a cloud of dust or in the welter of a swill
of mud, each man seeing no more of the war than the tail-board of
the wagon in front, or the flash of faces where men light their pipes by
the roadside, or the glow of some lantern where there is a guard to
pass.
So, in moving out of the camp into this life upon the roads, a man
passes into the heart of modern war, which is, in the main, a war of
supply. Twilight and the dust together make the wagons and the
soldiers the color of a far horizon. Dust wavers and settles on the
moving things, the smell of dust is in the breath, and the taste of it
on the lips. The old men who work by the roadside night and day,
cracking stones for road metal, disappear, as each wagon passes,
in a smoke of dust.
Soon the light dies. In open parts of the road, where things passing
show against the sky, the convoys of wagons, twenty in a section,
move and are black. The road is noisy with their rumble. Some of
them, driven by men who are perhaps asleep, sway out of line into
the middle of the road. Then the ambulance-drivers, trying to get
past, sound their klaxons and shout, “A droit!” till the sleeper wakes
and turns his wagon aside. Sometimes, as the ambulance shoots
ahead of a string of wagons, there is an empty stretch of road running
through empty fields and the night is as in peace time. Then something
big, black, and flopping shows ahead, making the darkness darker;
there comes a jingling and the snort of horses, and out of the night
comes, perhaps, a battery going down, gun after gun, some quicken-
ing, some staying, or empty horse-wagons with spare horses tied to
the tail-board and the chains rattling on the slats and the drivers
riding. They pass and drop down into the night like ships gone hull
down; but others and others come, some walking, some with their
No. 179] American Ambulance Field Service 7159
men walking, calling to their horses, some rattling quick and empty,
some slipping or shying or kicking at the passers. At times, as the
ambulances go, something like a caterpillar appears ahead, moving
slowly with a caterpillar’s humping wriggle, and filling one half of
the road. This blackness is lower than the other blacknesses, and un-
like anything met with hitherto. At the sound of the klaxon it shogs
a little to one side, stray blacknesses break from it, and the humping
wriggle pauses in some disorder. It is a column of the reléve going
up to the front. It is a company of foot-soldiers marching in column
of twos, each man bent under his load, which makes him twice the
size of a man, and all walking slowly, many of them with walking-
staffs, like pilgrims... .
All the way, at odd times, far off, with neither sense nor sequence,
the guns have sounded almost like the noises of peace—blasting or
pile-driving. Now, outside the village, as the ambulance comes out
upon the hill, they sound for the first time like the noise of battle,
much nearer and much more terrible. Now, too, far off, as the car
runs in the open, the drivers see the star-shells going up and up, and
bursting into white stars, and pausing and drifting slowly down, very,
very slowly, pausing as they come, far apart, yet so many that there
are always more than one aloft. They are the most beautiful things
in modern war and almost the most terrible. Often they pause so
long before dying that they look like the lights of peace in lighthouse
and city beacon, or like planets in the sky.
In this open space the drivers can see for some miles over the battle-
field. Over it all, as far as the eye can see, the lights are rising and
falling. There is not much noise, but a sort of mutter of battle with
explosions now and then. Very far away, perhaps ten miles away,
there is fighting, for in that quarter the sky glimmers as though with
summer lightning; the winks and flashes of the guns shake and die
across the heaven.
One side of the road is here screened with burlap stretched upon
posts for half a mile together; otherwise daytime traffic on it would
be seen by the enemy. Some of the burlap is in rags and some of the
posts are broken; the wreck of a cart lies beside the road, and in the
road itself are roundish patches of new stones where shell-holes have
been mended, perhaps a few minutes before.
Just overhead as the car passes comes a blasting, shattering crash
760 Over There [1916
which is like sudden death. Then another and another follow, one
on the other, right overhead. On the ground above, the slope of the
little hill, a battery of soixante-quinze guns has just opened fire. On
the tail of each crash comes the crying of the shell, passing overhead
like a screech-owl, till it is far away in the enemy lines, where it bursts.
Another round follows, but by this time the ambulance is a hundred
yards away, and now, on the heels of the affront, comes the answer.
Rather to the right and very near in the stillness of the moonlight
an enemy battery replies, one, two, three guns in as many seconds,
a fourth gun a little late, and the shells come with a scream across
and burst behind the ambulances, somewhere near the battery.
Then a starlight goes up near enough to dazzle the eyes, and near
enough, one would think, to show the ambulance to the world; and as
the starlight goes down a second round comes from the battery aimed
God knows at what, but so as to arroser the district. The noise of the
engine stifles the noise of the shells, but above the engines one shell’s
noise is heard; the screech of its rush comes very near, there is a
flash ahead, a burst, and the patter of falling fragments. Long after-
ward, perhaps six seconds afterward, a tiny piece of shell drops upon
the ambulance. Another shell bursts behind the car, and another
on the road in front; the car goes round the new shell-hole and
passes on.
This is “the front.” Two hundred and fifty yards away, a seventh
part of a mile, two minutes’ walk, are the enemy lines. Dead ahead,
in what looks like a big rubbish-heap, such as one may see in suburbs
where builders have been putting up a row of villas, is the Poste de
Secours. The rubbish-heap was once a farm, though no man, not
even the farmer, could now say where his buildings lay.
The drivers go down the sloping path into the cellars. The cellar
roof has been propped and heaped with layers of timber balks inter-
spersed with sand-bags, and the cellar itself, shored up, is like a mine.
It is a vast place with several rooms in it, from one of which, strongly
lighted, comes the sound of voices and of people moving. Looking
round near at hand, as the eye becomes accustomed to the darkness,
one sees some loaded stretchers on the floor near the doorway. Three
dead men, who were alive an hour ago, lie there awaiting burial.
They were all hit by one torpedo, says the stretcher-bearer, these and
five others, but these three died on their way to the Poste. Some say
No. 179] American Ambulance Fieid Service 761
that the dead look as though they were asleep, but no. sleep ever
looked like death.
Presently the sick arrive, haggard and white, but able to walk,
and the gathering breaks up and the ambulances are free to go. The
moon is blotted by this time; it is darker and beginning to rain, the
men say. On leaving the operating-room, one hears again as a real
thing the scream of the rush of the big shells, the thump of the bursts,
and the crash of the great guns. The stretchers are passed into the
ambulances, the sick are helped on to seats, they are covered with
blankets, and the doors are closed. It is much darker now and the
rain has already made the ground sticky; and with the rain the smell
of corruption has become heavier, and the ruin is like what it is—a
graveyard laid bare. Shells from the enemy rush overhead and burst
in a village which lies on the road home. They are strafing the village;
the cars have a fair chance of being blown to pieces; it is as dark as
pitch and the road will be full of new shell-holes. The drivers start
their engines and turn the cars for home; the rain drives in their
faces as they go, and along the road in front of them the shells flash
at intervals, lighting the tree-stumps.
These drivers (there are now, and have been, some hundreds of
them) are men of education. They are the very pick and flower of
American life, some of them professional men, but the greater number
of them young men on the threshold of life, lads just down from
college or in their last student years. All life lies before them in their
own country, but they have put that aside for an idea, and have come
to help France in her hour of need. Two of them have died and many
of them have been maimed for France, and all live a life of danger
and risk death nightly. To this company of splendid and gentle
and chivalrous Americans be all thanks and greetings from the friends
and allies of sacred France.
John Masefield, The Harvest of the Night, in Harper’s Magazine (New York, 1917),
CXXXIV, 801a-810b passim.
762 Over There [1916
180. In Memory of the American Volunteers (1916)
BY ALAN SEEGER
For Seeger, see No. 169 above.
I
Y, it is fitting on this holiday,
Commemorative of our soldier dead,
When—with sweet flowers of our New England May
Hiding the lichened stones by fifty years made gray—
Their graves in every town are garlanded,
That pious tribute should be given too
To our intrepid few
Obscurely fallen here beyond the seas,
Those to preserve their country’s greatness died,
But by the death of these
Something that we can look upon with pride
Has been achieved, nor wholly unreplied
Can sneers triumph in the charge they make
That from a war where Freedom was at stake
America withheld and, daunted stood aside.
II
Be they remembered here with each reviving spring,
Not only that in May, when life is loveliest,
Around Neuville-Saint-Vaast and the disputed crest
Of Vimy, they, superb, unfaltering,
In that fine onslaught that no fire could halt,
Parted impetuous to their first assault;
But that they brought fresh hearts and springlike too
To that high mission, and ’tis meet to strew
With twigs of lilac and spring’s earliest rose
The cenotaph of those
Who in the cause that history most endears
Fell in the sunny morn and flower of their young years.
No. 180! In Memory of the American Volunteers 763
MI
Yet sought they neither recompense nor praise,
Nor to be mentioned in another breath
Than their blue-coated comrades whose great days
It was their pride to share—ay, share even to the death!
Nay, rather, France, to you they rendered thanks
(Seeing they came for honor, not for gain),
Who, opening to them your glorious ranks,
Gave them that great occasion to excel,
That chance to live the life most free from stain
And that rare privilege of dying well.
IV
O friends! I know not since that war began
From which no people nobly stands aloof
If in all moments we have given proof
Of virtues that were thought American.
I know not if in all things done and said
All has been well and good,
Or if each one of us can hold his head
As proudly as he should,
Or, from the pattern of those mighty dead
Whose shades our country venerates to-day,
If we’ve not somewhat fallen and somewhat gone astray.
But you to whom our land’s good name is dear,
If there be any here
Who wonder if her manhood be decreased,
Relaxed its sinews and its blood less red
Than that at Shiloh and Antietam shed,
Be proud of these, have joy in this at least,
And cry: “Now heaven be praised
That in that hour that most imperilled her,
Menaced her liberty who foremost raised
Europe’s bright flag of freedom, some there were
Who, not unmindful of the antique debt,
Came back the generous path of Lafayette;
And when of a most formidable foe
764
Over There
She checked each onset, arduous to stem—
Foiled and frustrated them—
On those red fields where blow with furious blow
Was countered, whether the gigantic fray
Rolled by the Meuse or at the Bois Sabot,
Accents of ours were in the fierce mêlée;
And on those furthest rims of hallowed ground
Where the forlorn, the gallant charge expires,
When the slain bugler has long ceased to sound,
And on the tangled wires
The last wild rally staggers, crumbles, stops,
Withered beneath the shrapnel’s iron showers:—
Now heaven be thanked, we gave a few brave drops;
Now heaven be thanked, a few brave drops were ours.”
V
There, holding still, in frozen steadfastness,
Their bayonets toward the beckoning frontiers,
They lie—our comrades—lie among their peers,
Clad in the glory of fallen warriors,
Grim clusters under thorny trellises.
Dry, furthest foam upon disastrous shores,
Leaves that made last year beautiful, still strewn
Even as they fell, unchanged, beneath the changing moon;
And earth in her divine indifference
Rolls on, and many paltry things and mean
Prate to be heard and caper to be seen.
But they are silent, calm; their eloquence
Is that incomparable attitude;
No human presences their witness are,
But summer clouds and sunset crimson-hued,
And showers and night winds and the northern star.
Nay, even our salutations seem profane,
Opposed to their Elysian quietude;
Our salutations calling from afar,
From our ignobler plane
And undistinction of our lesser parts:
[1916
No. 181] A Lesson from the Tanks 765
Hail, brothers, and farewell; you are twice blest, brave hearts.
Double your glory is who perished thus,
For you died for France and vindicated us.
Alan Seeger, Poems (New York, Scribner’s, 1916), 170-174.
— o
181. A Lesson from the Tanks (1917)
BY HENRY SEIDEL CANBY
Canby has lectured on literary subjects at Yale, and is the author of several
volumes relating to the short story; he is also editor of the Saturday Review of Lit-
erature. During the war he devoted himself to liaison work for the British Ministry
of Information. This brought him into contact with various aspects of the war,
one of which he discusses here in a charmingly whimsical way. Tanks were among
the new offensive weapons developed by the World War; their first use by the Eng-
lish caught the Germans wholly unprepared.
£25 RE Tanks conscious? If you should meet one sauntering
along a route nationale or sliding down a side hill for a drink
of petrol, you would not swear to the contrary. Do Tanks think?
Feel a Whippet twirl under your feet, right and left, as she picks her
road across trench bays, or watch a Mark V mount and jog the length
of a train of flat cars until he finds one that suits him, and you can
almost believe it. Do Tanks breed? Well, at least there are male
Tanks and female Tanks, and to all appearances offspring seem quite
as probable as with elephants. Have Tanks a sense of humor? Per-
haps not, but like Falstaff they are a cause of humor in others. Five
new Whippet Tanks, with their machine guns jammed, chased a fat
German major down a long hill in France one morning in May, their
eight miles an hour just equal to his perspiring best, while a regiment
of Australians at the top collapsed in laughter and forgot to fire. I
should like to ask that German (who may be still running) whether
Tanks are mere machines.
The Mark IV Tank is a slow and sullen dinosaur. Four miles an
hour is his limit. Frequently, with sponsons taken off, and armament
removed, he mounts a platform on his back and carries a sixty-pounder
gun; or hauls a sledge, like an ox team, to pull big howitzers over shell
craters. The Mark V is the next step upward in evolution. He is
766 Over There [1917
good for five miles an hour, has made nine, and one man can drive
him. “Him” is not accurate, for if his weapons are machine guns in-
stead of two-inch cannon, “her” is the proper designation. When
I climbed down into the hot and whirring middle of a Mark V, heard
the gears squeal and roar, and saw through the eye-slits the ground
swinging under us, I knew how a steam roller might feel in a briar
patch. Nothing could stop our many ton, hundred and fifty horse
power. We came to a trench, swung up, so easily, and down with
scarcely a quiver, and so on about our business. And if the trench had
been wider? Why then, there are “tadpole tails” provided, which
hook behind and serve for leverage.
But the Mark V isa ponderous invention. It was with the Whippet
that imagination touched the Tanks. The Whippet—so named I
suppose from the speedy dog which chases rabbits to earth—is the
pacing dromedary of Tankdom. She is light—only a few tons I should
guess—and instead of accommodating man Jonah-like in her entrails,
carries a cab like a camel’s hump, from which one can look, sometimes
perpendicularly, behind. The Whippet has two engines, one for each
of her paw series, and that accounts for her eccentric motion. As
she runs her eight, ten, up to a conceivable twenty miles, an hour,
she squeals raucously. At a rock or a stump—both bad for Tanks,
which can be “hung up” on their “bellies’—she whirls with un-
believable rapidity till your eyes are looking one way and your stomach
another. Then she rumbles gaily over the field seeking for trees under
twelve inches through to practise on, sees a trench, rises on her hind
quarters, drops below sky-line with a teeth-shaking bump, grips the
further bank, rolls up screaming, and charges off for more.
A bank attracts her. She noses it until she finds an angle not quite,
but almost perpendicular, and sticking her nails in the sod, worms up,
while you cling to the machine-gun, and look at grass which is both
back of and below you. And as she goes she spits oil, blows dust, and
flattens the world behind her. If an enemy, you may escape her by
lying on the bottom of a trench; you can smash her with a shell if
you can catch her on the wing, which is not easy; but the preferable
place with a Whippet is on top. Never was devised a more dangerous,
humorous, human engine of warfare than this. Indeed, it is not Tank
tactics, which are not yet publishable, but Tank humanity, that is the
subject of this writing.
No. 181] A Lesson from the Tanks 767
I was several times a guest at “Tanks,” the name applied not only
to the great repair station and depot, headquarters of the Tank Corps,
but also to the quiet chateau with its admirable seventeenth-century
porch where the young general of Tanks and his active staff are
quartered. Our talk ranged through and about and above Tank
tactics and on into England and the psychology of the races at war;
but it came back and back to the raison d’etre of the Tank. “The
business of the Tank,” he said, “is to meet and master the machine
gun so that infantry can carry on further; and in this its use has but
just begun. Its object is to save men.” ...
The truth must already be apparent. The Tank is our first real
approach to the mechanical soldier—the soldier without blood to spill
and nerves to tear, who can nevertheless perform the inevitable
business of physical collision which must come if human will set against
human will finds no better means of settling the conflict. ... Here
is a mechanical substitute for warring man. In the period of the
Italian Renaissance warfare reached such a pitch of science that the
mercenary generals who fought for Venice or Florence could sometimes
calculate the probable outcome, and save their troops the hardships
of battle. . . . Are we coming to an age when mechanisms will be
sent from our fortresses to fight it out under scientific control, the
best machines, best made, best handled, to win? War will scarcely
be ended that way. ... But the Tank is a first step toward sub-
stituting steel for bodies in a war where muscles have given place to
high explosives, eyes to range finders, ears to microphones, noses to
gas signals, legs to petrol, and skulls to “tin helmets.”
It is hard not to be whimsical in mood when writing of Tanks, and
yet I do not desire to be whimsical. Tanks were no joke for the
Germans. Their own clumsy contrivance, built in imitation, proved
how anxious and how unable they were to retort effectively in kind.
And that we should be building machines to take the place of men is
no mere romance of science or expedient of a warfare where “cannon
fodder” has risen in price. For if the Tank takes the place of many
common soldiers, then many common soldiers need no longer stay
common!
The Germans recognized this principle in their later methods of
attack. Roughly speaking, and in exact accord with their idea of
the value of life where the state and its ambitions are concerned,
768 Over There [1917
they divided their infantry into two sorts. There were the regiments
of inferior material, true cannon fodder, which could be pushed in
masses against the enemy, succeeding often by sheer momentum,
in spite of frightful losses; and there were the picked men, of “storm
troop” grade, armed with machine guns, able to hold what was taken,
and each worth a score of the rifle-armed rabble. This was the scheme
of Prussian evolution toward super-war, a less humane and ultimately
a less effective method than the British invention. Furthermore, a
method which looked toward a Prussian future merely. For note that
men and machines in Prussian eyes had the same value, or rather,
that men by proper discipline could be made as valuable as machines.
The Prussian mind conceived a battering-ram of plebeian, second-rate
flesh (preferably Social Democrats, unskilled laborers, and the like)
which could be crushed in assault without material loss. The Western
mind imagined the Tank, a super-Tommy without his precious vital
Spark: oi
If it is possible—and who will deny it—that in future wars, if we
permit them, machines will serve as infantry and cavalry; that guns
will be laid and fixed by mechanical means from some safe place in the
rear; that submarines and monitors will operate by wave lengths
sent from shore; if it is probable that the coming world, whether in
war or in peace, will be as full of machinery, of appliances, electrical,
chemical, mathematical, as the inside of a submarine, why then what
shall we do with our Tommy in the meantime? Shall we keep him an
automaton, whose humor, like the Tanks’ is pathetic precisely because
he does understand so little of the vast forces around him, forces as
far as the moon beyond his control? Shall we make him more of a
machine, or more of a man? For after the shaking-up this war has
given him, neither he nor his children will stand still.
If it is more of a man that we wish to make him, a man competent
to control machinery because he can think out how and where and why
it is to be used, then we must educate him. Not half-heartedly as we
have done, but as the Greeks would have educated him, as seem-
ingly they did educate even their slaves, by contact and practice with
the best of the technical processes he will have to follow; by absorp-
tion of the best ideas as to the relation of his work to his life. The first
means technical education raised to an excellence which we have not
yet given it, and broadened to cover all the processes necessary or use-
No. 182] An American in the British Air Service 769
ful for the preservation of life. There will be less and less place for
unskilled labor and unskilled fighters among civilized men; machines
will be the unskilled laborers; and if your common soldier of to-day
is left technically illiterate, he will sink to their level. . . .
We have invented machinery without learning to control it. Let
us not invent (or suffer) new distributions of power without providing
an effective education in its use and enjoyment.
We devised the Tank and sent it upon its way rejoicing to the dis-
comfiture of our enemies. It is harder to devise a new and improved
man, but quite as possible. We cannot give him religion, which he
clearly is seeking, we cannot give him a loving heart, we cannot give
him courage if he does not possess it, we cannot give him strength of
intellect, we cannot give him instinctive morality. But a well-trained
mind, and well-trained muscles, and a fairly sound body we can give
him in nine cases out of ten—even the Chinese coolies on the British
front have been taught to build complex machinery; and a sense of
his place in the world, economic, social, ethical, historical we can give
him; and also in some measure the power of independent thought.
The object of the Tank and all mechanical contrivances is to save life,
to save life in order that in future men shall be men and not machines.
Henry Seidel Canby, Education by Violence (New York, Harcourt Brace &
Company, IgIQ), IZ0-I51 passim.
ee eee
182. An American in the British Air Service (1918)
ANONYMOUS
This impetuous young American joined the British Air Service early in the war
and recorded in vivid style a daily account of his experiences. The extract printed
here gives a thrilling picture of combat in the air. The author was subsequently
killed in action.
June 22nd— Ẹ GOT up this morning feeling like a week-end in the
city though I had no reason to. I drank too much
coffee before going up and I’m as nervous as a kitten now. Must be
getting the Woofits.
J had rather a surprise yesterday. I was some distance back of the
770 Over There [1918
patrol and saw a Hun two-seater about three miles across the lines
so went for him. I expected about thirty seconds at close quarters
under his tail and then to watch him go down in flames. It looked
like cold meat. I started my final dive about one thousand feet
above him and opened fire at one hundred yards.
Then I got a surprise. I picked the wrong Hun. Just as I opened
fire, he turned sharply to the left and I was doing about two hundred
so couldn’t turn but had to overshoot and half roll back. As I half
rolled on top of him, he half rolled to and when I did an Immelman,
he turned to the right and forced me on the outside arc and gave his
observer a good shot at me as I turned back the other way to cut him
off from the other side. I fired a burst from my turn but my shots
went wild so pulled up and half rolled on top of him again and opened
fire from immediately above and behind. He stalled before I could
get a burst in and side-slipped away from me but gave me a no-deflec-
tion shot at him when he straightened out. I didn’t have to make any
allowance for his speed or direction and his observer was shooting at
me. The observer dropped down in his cockpit so I suppose I killed
him. But I couldn’t get the pilot. He put the plane in a tight spiral
and I couldn’t seem to get in position properly. Cal and Tiny Dixon
came in about that time and everybody was shooting at him from all
angles. I know he didn’t have any motor because he came down very
slowly and didn’t attempt to maneuver. We were firing from every
conceivable angle but we couldn’t seem to hit the tank or the pilot
and every now and then he’d take a crack at me with his front gun
when Id try him head on.
He was a stout fellow, a good fighter and I hope he is still alive.
If his observer had been any good I wouldn’t be writing this now.
He hit one of my front spars and that was all. I left him at one hun-
dred feet as my engine was overheating and was sputtering and I’ve
had enough machine gun fire from the ground to last me for a while
and I don’t like field guns from directly in the rear. Accidents will
happen. So I started back and joined the patrol. . . .
June 24th—We found nine Hun scouts yesterday and dove on thein
but they wouldn’t fight and ran for home. We chased them but
couldn’t catch them. Something funny about that. It must be a new
type of plane and they were just practicing. They were fast whatever
they were. My motor got to acting funny and the water began to
No. 182] An American in the British Air Service gm
boil. It cut out a few times and I just did get back and landed be-
tween Kemmel and Popheringhe in a big field that was mostly shell
holes. There were some American troops up there of the 30th Division
and they helped me to get some water and get going when it cooled
off. It got me home but didn’t run any too well. They have retimed
it but unless it turns up better I am going to ask for a new one. These
Hispano Vipers are fine when they are all right but the slightest
trouble bawls them all up. Springs was messing around over by
Messines and flushed a two-seater out of the clouds and got him.
Tiny Dixon was firing at him too, so they halved him. Randall
knocked down a high two-seater and Hall is missing.
We have a new pilot to take Thompson’s place, Capt. Webster, a
quiet, reserved fellow. He’s not a captain in the flying corps but in
his infantry regiment. When any one transfers from their regiment
to the flying corps they come in as second lieutenants but keep their
honorary rank in their regiment and draw the pay of that rank.
Then after they transfer, if they prove they’re good and get a flight,
then they become temporary captains and rank as captains in the
flying corps and draw a captain’s pay but keep their old regimental
rank. We have seven captains now but only three of them rank as
such and those are all lieutenants in their regiments. There’s one
man who is known in the gazette as, “Lieutenant, temporary brigadier
general.” He must be good. That’s the right system. In our army,
if a major transfers to the aviation corps he comes in as a major and
bosses men who have been flying for years and know more about it
than he will ever know. I don’t know who’s going to do our fighting
but I know who’s going to get all the rank and all the medals.
June 25th—Springs and I flew up to Dunkirk to get some cham-
pagne yesterday. We landed at Petit Snythe and found an American
squadron was being organized there, the 17th. Sam Eckert is C. O.
and Tipton and Hamilton and Newhall are the flight commanders.
They’ve got Le Rhone Camels and may the Lord make His face to
smile upon them because they are going to need more than mortal
guidance.
There was a brand new American major up there in a new Cadillac
named Fowler. We turned our nose up at him but he insisted on
being nice. His brother, who was killed at Issoudon, went to Princeton
with Springs so they got to chewing the rag. He was so new the tags
772 Over There [1918
were still on his gold leaves and he didn’t know how to salute, —saluted
like an Englishman. When he heard why we’d come up he insisted
on driving us into Dunkirk in his Cadillac. We got the champagne
and he insisted on taking us into the Chapeau Rouge for a drink. We
shot down a couple of bottles of champagne and he was all right, we
thought, even for a new Kiwi. He kept on asking such simple ques-
tions. He wanted to know all about how our patrols were led and if
we led any ourselves and how we got along with the British. He acted
awfully simple, just like an ordinary U. S. major, and we did the best
we could to enlighten him as to the proper method of picking cold
meat and bringing most of our men back. His ideas were all wrong
and we concluded that he must have been reading some of the books
by the boys at home. We got a snoutful and he brought us back to
the field and we invited him down to dinner at 85 and then he left.
We asked Sam what Fowler had done to get a gold leaf and he told
us that Fowler had been out with the British since 1914 and had the
Military Cross and had done about five hundred hours flying over the
lines. The joke is certainly on us. But he ought to know better than
to fill a pilot full of champagne and then ask him how good he is. To
tell the truth I think we were very modest. And why doesn’t he wear
wings or his decorations? If I had the M. C. all the rules that Pershing
can make couldn’t keep it off my chest. . . .
We went down to have dinner with Nigger’s brother at the 2nd
AnD sea
I heard a funny story down there. The Germans took Lille and the
Allies held Armentiéres. For a long time they continued to run the
factories in Armentières on electricity that came from Lille. A French-
man was kept to run the power plant by the Germans and he didn’t
cut Armentières off. It was several months before he was caught.
June 27th—Springs is missing. He and MacGregor and Inglis were
out this morning on the dawn patrol. Mac was leading and spotted
a two-seater over Armentiéres. They went after him and had to chase
him a bit further. Mac got to him first and missed his dive. Springs
got under him and stayed there. The Hun stalled up and the observer
was shooting down at Springs when Mac got back in position and got
him. That was the last seen of Springs. Inglis says he saw some
smoke coming out of his fusilage when the observer was shooting at
him. It’s afternoon now and no word has come from him so I guess
No. 182] An American in the British Air Service 778
he’s cooked. Requiescat in pace, as he would say! I’ve got to go on a
balloon straff now.
June 29th—Springs is back. He brought back a school of pink
porpoises and a couple of funny stories. His guns jammed when he
went under the two-seater and he was trying to clear the stoppages
when the observer hit his oil pipe. His motor didn’t stop at once
but brought him back a little way before the bearings melted. He
glided back just across the lines and crashed down wind in a machine
gun emplacement. His face is a mess where the butt of his Vickers
gun knocked a hole in his chin and he got a crack on the top of his
head and a pair of black eyes. One of the longerons tore his flying
suit right up the back and just grazed his skin and removed his helmet.
Some Tommies fished him out and sorted the ruins. He says the first
thing he thought of when he came to was his teeth on account of Mac.
He ran his tongue around his mouth and couldn’t find any front teeth.
He let out a yell. “What’s the matter, sir?” a Tommy asked him.
“My teeth,” sobs Springs, “they’re all gone!” “Oh, no they ain’t,
sir,” says the obliging Tommy, “here they are, sir!” and with that
he reaches down and pulls his lips off his teeth. His teeth were all
right, they were just on the outside of his face.
There wasn’t any anesthetic up there but somebody brought a
bottle of cognac. Every time he’d try to take a drink of it, it would
all run out of the hole in his chin. So he spent the morning with his
head tilted back and his mouth open while an Irish padre poured the
cognac down his throat for him. He said after a little while the pain
let up but they brought him another bottle so he kept up the treat-
ment. He got back into the Forest of Nieppe and telephoned back
to the wing that afternoon for a tender to come and get him. Then
some doc up there gave him a shot of antitetanus serum. The tender
came up after him and they started back, stopping at every estaminet
on the way. He didn’t have on a uniform, just his pajamas under his
flying suit but had two or three hundred francs in his suit so they
would stop and he’d buy champagne for the mechanics to pour down
his throat. They got back here about dark, all of them tight as
sausage skins. We had a celebration and made some strawberry
julep to pour down his throat and we all managed to light up. Then
some one noticed that his face needed a bit of hemstitching so we took
him down to the Duchess of Sutherland’s hospital in the woods below
774 Over There [1918
here. The doctor down there seemed to think the crack on his heaa
was serious. We were in a hot room and none of us felt too good.
The doc told him to stand up and close his eyes and then open them.
Of course he couldn’t focus his eyes. I could have told the doc that.
Then he told him to close them again and keep them closed. He
swayed a couple of times and then keeled over on the floor and passed
out of the picture. “Ah, ha,” says the doc, “I thought so! Con-
cussion of the brain! We’ll have to keep him in bed for a while.” So
they sewed up his face and he didn’t know a thing about it next day.
The doc says we can’t see him for a few days as he must be kept
absolutely quiet. Id like to see them do it.
June 30th. . . —We went to see Springs this afternoon and he
seems to be doing all right. He’s got lips like a nigger minstrel’s anda
mouthful of thread and a couple of black eyes. We took him a couple
of bottles of champagne but he didn’t need it as they serve it to him
there. Things have been sort of quiet at the front lately in the sector
and there were only three of them in there. One is a brigadier general
who had been wounded seven times before this last shot in his leg.
There are about eighteen nurses there and it is the custom for all
the nurses from the Duchess down to walk by and ask each patient
how he feels each morning. The general says if they just had short
skirts on and would whistle he’d applaud and join the chorus.
Springs’s face is going to be all right because they sewed it up from the
inside.
War Birds: Diary of an Unknown Aviator (copyright 1926, George H. Doran
Company), 206-223 passim.
No. 183] Training American Aviators in France 775
183. ‘Training American Aviators in France (1918)
BY COLONEL HIRAM BINGHAM (1920)
Bingham was an explorer in South America, a Professor at Yale, and a writer
on Latin-American conditions. He was Governor of Connecticut, and was elected
in 1924 to the Senate of the United States. The extract here is taken from his
account of his work as commanding officer of the Allies’ largest flying school, the
Aviation Instruction Center, at Issoudun, France.—For general bibliography on
America in the war, see No. 171 above. On air service, see also No. 182 above.
HE plan for Issoudun was that it should be used chiefly as a
place where pilots already fully trained in the United States
should have a “refresher course” before being sent to the Front. Due
to the lack of advanced training planes in the United States and the
fact that it was practically impossible during the continuance of the
war for our pilots to do much more than get their preliminary training
and “acquire their wings” before coming to France, it became nec-
essary to develop at Issoudun a complete course in advanced flying
and in aérial tactics. This was also made necessary because so many
fundreds of cadets had been sent to France without flying training at
all, and could secure only preliminary instruction at the French schools
or at our own Second Aviation Instruction Centre at Tours... .
At the beginning no definite course of instruction was laid out.
Most of the teachers were French pilots, who naturally used the ideas
then in vogue at the French schools which they had attended. Their
methods were better adapted for French than American aviators.
The course at Issoudun was not thought out on paper beforehand by
a theorist, but was gradually evolved under the most strenuous con-
ditions imaginable and contained ideas derived from a very consider-
able number of the best American pilots in France. With a true sense
of the importance of having the best possible teachers and a keen
realization of the old adage that “a stream cannot rise higher than
its source,” it was early determined to retain only the very best
American pilots for teachers and instructors. Each man that went
through the school was jealously watched by those in charge of the
work at the different fields, and if they saw unusual qualities in him,
he was promptly requisitioned as a member of the staff. . . .
With true American devotion to high ideals, the great majority of
the first class pilots selected as instructors cheerfully gave up the
776 Over There [1918
chance of becoming aces themselves in order to perfect the output of
the school and thus to help increase the total number of American
aces at the Front. In order to prevent our self-sacrificing instructors
from getting stale, a few were allowed to take turns in going to the
Front for a month at a time. This gave them new ideas and new
experiences. When they came back to the school they had the ad-
vantage in every case of having successfully brought down one or
more Huns. This increased their prestige with their students and let
them feel that they had their chance at a little real action. . . .
With such a splendid staff as was gradually built up by following
this policy, it was only necessary to show each man that his ideas
would be welcomed and to allow him to put into practice his own
theories of teaching in order to develop a very thorough course of
study. sis
At some of the French schools the Rouleurs were especially built
“penguins,” which were guaranteed not to fly. At Issoudun, how-
ever, we were accustomed to use what we could get. In this case the
best thing available was a Morane monoplane from which the ailerons
had been taken, and which was equipped with a 40 to 50 H. P. Gnome
motor.
Many of the boys who had learned to fly in the States could not
understand why they were put on non-flying Rouleurs before being
sent up in the air. Some of them, in fact, managed to get by Field 1
without really learning what the work there had to teach them. Later
they had to be sent back from one of the advance fields because they
were unable to make proper use of the rudder when taking off, taxying,
or landing. They were finally ready to admit that the rudders of
small fast planes, designed for successful use in the air when travelling
at more than one hundred and twenty miles and hour, are not large
enough when the plane is going over the ground at only twenty-five
to thirty miles an hour. The pilot must use his rudder very gently
in the air, but very roughly on the ground. If he does not thoroughly
understand handling the small rudder of the fast scout planes, it will
be almost impossible for him to make them roll straight on the ground.
Most of our advanced planes were short-bodied Nieuports equipped
with rotary motors. As I have already said in speaking of the troubles
of our cadets, the Nieuports were extremely fond of making a violent
and unexpected turn on the ground—the cheval de bois.
No. 183] Training American Aviators in France 777
The lower left wing of the Nieuport has a slightly greater angle of
incidence than the corresponding wing on the other side. This is in
order to aid the pilot in overcoming the effect of the torque of the
rotary motor. It causes the left wing to drag a bit, and this makes it
more difficult to roll straight on the ground. This tendency is still
further increased in landing on a field that is not quite levei (and few
French fields were really level). If in landing you happen to light on
one wheel with greater force than on the other, the tendency of the
Nieuport to turn abruptly and unexpectedly is very marked. It will
readilv be seen that it was very necessary for the student to under-
stand thoroughly the use of a small rudder when operating on the
ground. We found the cranky, non-flying “clipped”? monoplanes
very useful for this purpose.
Students were also encouraged to study the action of the motor
before starting on their first ride, and to keep the application of power
as steady as possible, since the slip stream of air from the propeller
acting on the rudder is the force that causes the latter to become
effective.
The student’s first trip was straight across the field, towards a.
soldier who was stationed at the far end, whose duty it was to help
him turn round and to start his motor in case he stalled it, as fre-
quently happened. The student was not accompanied by a teacher
in his wild ride. It was the duty of the teacher to watch carefully
the cause of any difficulties and observe whether the student was.
avoiding trouble by going too slow, or was really learning to make
proper use of the rudder. The second trip was made at a higher rate
of speed, but with the control stick pulled well back and the tail
held firmly on the ground. When the pilot had succeeded in making a
good round trip with the tail skid helping to keep him straight by
plowing through the field, he was told to get the tail off the ground
for a few rods and then “make a landing.” .. .
After having satisfied the instructors at Field 1 of their ability to
use the rudder, the students walked over to Field 2, where dual con-
trol machines, operated by experienced instructors, were ready to give
them their first experience in actual flying in France... .
The length of time which a student had to spend on Field 2 de-
pended entirely on himself and his ability to learn rapidly and to
demonstrate his efficiency not only to the instructor to whom he was
778 Over There [1918
assigned, but also to another first-class pilot known as the tester, who
gave him his final examination. If he failed to satisfy the tester that
he had mastered the intricacies of flying the 23-meter Nieuport, he
was sent back to his instructor for further lessons. Each instructor
was allowed to follow his own ideas to a very considerable extent, al-
though all were obliged to riđe in the front seat. Some used the tel-
ephone and some found that the students did better when left alone,
and when they were not trying to listen to the telephone and “feel”
the ship at the same time... .
Since most of our students had received their preliminary training
with a stationary motor, they found it difficult to understand the
gyroscopic action of the rotary motor, which inclines to pull the nose
of the plane down into a spin if it is not held level on a turn. In flying
the JN-4 we used to be told to nose down on the turns so as to avoid
losing flying speed. This tendency of the Curtiss trained pilots had to
be overcome before it was safe to let them fly with a rotary motor.
American trained pilots were also inclined to fly with too little rud-
dere).
I mention these matters in some detail because many people found
it difficult to understand why, after a pilot had earned his wings in
the United States, it was necessary to give bim instruction in a dual
control machine in France. At times considerable pressure was
brought to bear upon us to let the American trained pilots go directly
into the fastest and smallest scout planes without giving them the in-
struction just described. We felt that this would be in some cases
inexcusable homicide. On the other hand, some of the men who were
“born pilots” needed less than an hour’s instruction on Fields 1 and
2 before they were able to go on to Field 3... .
At Field 3 he found a 23-meter Nieuport not fitted with dual con-
trols, but intended for solo flying. The absence of the instructor in
the front seat not only made the machine lighter and enabled it to
leave the ground more quickly and climb faster, but also had a psy-
chological effect in making the pilot realize that he had no one but him-
self to depend upon. This ship is an excellent machine to use in
carrying single passengers and landing in small fields. .
The work at Field 3 consisted in making the student as familiar as
possible with the Nieuport 23 and giving him plenty of confidence.
He was required to make a sufficient number of landings to overcome
No. 183] Training American Aviators in France 779
his dread of unexpected turns. His air work was carefully watched
to make sure that he was equally good on both left-hand and right-
hand turns. He was required to make spiral turns of more than
45° to determine whether he was able to use his elevators as a
rudder and his rudders as an elevator when banking over to that
extent.
His instruction in cross-country flying depended to a certain extent
on what kind of planes we had. . . . The course was designed to
familiarize the pilot with the difference between flying over France
and flying over the United States. Most of our fields in America were
so located that any one with average intelligence could find his way
back to the field without the use of a map, or, if required to use a map,
would be left in no doubt whatever as to his whereabouts. In France,
however, with its large number of small towns and villages that
looked very much alike from the air, its great number of straight,
white roads leading in every direction, its crazy-quilt design of small
cultivated fields, bewildering in their similarity and complexity, the
chance of getting lost in the air even while using one of the excelient
French maps was very considerable. The shape of the forested areas
was the most important thing to learn. Our pilots were fond of telling
the story of a champion cross-country flyer from the United States
who had never had any difficulty with map reading and who scoffed
at the idea that it was necessary for him to learn anything additional
in this subject at Issoudun, getting totally lost on his first cross-
country flight. He flew until obliged to land because he was out of
gas. He finally had to telephone from some distant point to have
somebody come and rescue him. In the United States he had flown
by roads and large rivers. In France there were too many of the first
and too few of the second.
In addition to this cross-country work at Field 3, students were
given an hour or so with an acrobacy instructor in one of our few Avros.
The student was put into all sorts of strange positions in the air to
test his air sense, to give him confidence in the ability of a plane to
right itself when certain definite rules were followed, and to determine
whether there was anything radically wrong with his power to over-
come dizziness and keep his head level under trying circumstances.
If the instructor found a pilot deficient at this point, he was sent
over to the hospital to consult the Medical Research Board. Ad-
780 Over There [1918
vanced physical tests sometimes showed that the pilot was not fully
competent and should never have been passed for training as an
aviator.
Hiram Bingham, An Explorer in the Air Service (New Haven, Yale University
Press, 1920), 126-140 passim.
184. The St. Mihiel Operation (1918)
BY GENERAL JOHN J. PERSHING
The operation here described was the first in which American troops played a
large independent part. Gen. Pershing’s account gives some idea of the problems
confronting military commanders and the considerations to be weighed in planning
military operations. The author was given the official title of General of the
Armies.—For general bibliography on America in the war, see No. 171 above.
T Bombon on July 24 there was a conference of all the Com-
manders-in-Chief for the purpose of considering Allied opera-
tions. Each presented proposals for the employment of the armies
under his command and these formed the basis of future co-operation
of the Allies. It was emphatically determined that the Allied attitude
should be to maintain the offensive. As the first operation of the
American Army, the reduction of the salient of St. Mihiel was to be
undertaken as soon as the necessary troops and material could be made
available. On account of the swampy nature of the country it was
especially important that the movement be undertaken and finished
before the fall rains should begin, which was usually about the middle
of September. . .
The reduction of the St. Mihiel salient was important, as it would
prevent the enemy from interrupting traffic on the Paris-Nancy Rail-
road by artillery fire and would free the railroad leading north through
St. Mihiel to Verdun. It would also provide us with an advantageous
base of departure for an attack against the Metz-Sedan Railroad
system which was vital to the German armies west of Verdun, and
against the Briey Iron Basin which was necessary for the production
of German armament and munitions.
No. 184] The St. Mihiel Operation 781
The general plan was to make simultaneous attacks against the
flanks of the salient. The ultimate objective was tentatively fixed
as the general line Marieulles (east of the Moselle)—heights south of
Gorze-Mars la Tout-Etain. The operation contemplated the use on
the western face of 3 or 4 American divisions, supported by the attack
of 6 divisions of the Second French Army on their left, while 7 Amer-
ican divisions would attack on the southern face, and 3 French divi-
sions would press the enemy at the tip of the salient. As the part to
be taken by the Second French Army would be closely related to the
attack of the First American Army, Gen. Pétain placed all the French
troops involved under my personal command.
By August 30, the concentration of the scattered divisions, corps,
and army troops, of the quantities of supplies and munitions required,
and the necessary construction of light railways and roads, were well
under way.
In accordance with the previous general consideration of operations
at Bombon on July 24, an allied offensive extending practically along
the entire active front was eventually to be carried out. After the
reduction of the St. Mihiel sector the Americans were to codperate
in the concentrated effort of the Allied armies. .. .
The plan suggested for the American participation in these opera-
tions was not acceptable to me because it would require the immediate
separation of the recently formed First American Army into several
groups, mainly to assist French armies. This was directly contrary
to the principle of forming a distinct American Army, for which my
contention had been insistent. An enormous amount of preparation
had already been made in construction of roads, railroads, regulating
stations, and other installations looking to the use and supply of our
armies on a particular front. The inherent disinclination of our
troops to serve under allied commanders would have grown and Amer-
ican morale would have suffered. My position was stated quite clearly
that the strategical employment of the First Army as a unit would be
undertaken where desired, but its disruption to carry out these pro-
posals would not be entertained.
A further conference at Marshal Foch’s headquarters was held on
September 2, at which Gen. Pétain was present. After discussion
the question of employing the American Army as a unit was conceded.
The essentials of the strategical decision previously arrived at pro-
782 Over There [1918
vided that the advantageous situation of the Allies should be exploited
to the utmost by vigorously continuing the general battle and extend-
ing it eastward to the Meuse. All the Allied armies were to be em-
ployed in a converging action. The British armies, supported by
the left of the French armies, were to pursue the attack in the direc-
tion of Cambrai; the center of the French armies, west of Rheims,
would continue the actions, already begun, to drive the enemy beyond
the Aisne; and the American Army, supported by the right of the
French armies, would direct its attack on Sedan and Mézières.
It should be recorded that although this general offensive was fully
outlined at the conference no one present expressed the opinion that
the final victory could be won in 1918. In fact, it was believed by
the French high command that the Meuse-Argonne attack could not
be pushed much beyond Montfaucon before the arrival of winter would
force a cessation of operations.
The choice between the two sectors, that east of the Aisne including
the Argonne Forest, or the Champagne sector, was left to me. In
my opinion, no other Allied troops had the morale or the offensive
spirit to overcome successfully the difficulties to be met in the Meuse-
Argonne sector and our plans and installations had been prepared
for an expansion of operations in that direction. So the Meuse-
Argonne front was chosen. The entire sector of 150 kilometers of
front, extending from Port-sur-Seille, east of the Moselle, west to
include the Argonne Forest, was accordingly placed under my com-
mand, including all French divisions then in that zone. The First
American Army was to proceed with the St. Mihiel operation, after
which the operation between the Meuse and the western edge of the
Argonne Forest was to be prepared and launched not later than Sep-
tember 25.
As a result of these decisions, the depth of the St. Mihiel opera-
tion was limited to the line Vigneulles-Thiaucourt-Regnieville. The
number of divisions to be used was reduced and the time shortened;
18 to rọ divisions were to be in the front line. There were 4 French
and 15 American divisions available, 6 of which would be in reserve,
while the two flank divisions of the front line were not to advance.
Furthermore, 2 Army Corps headquarters, with their corps troops,
practically all the Army Artillery and Aviation, and the First, Second,
and Fourth Divisions, the first two destined to take a leading part in
No. 184] The St. Mihiel Operation 783
the St. Mihiel attack, were ali due to be withdrawn and started for
the Meuse-Argonne by the fourth day of the battle.
The salient had been held by the Germans since September, 1914.
It covered the most sensitive section of the enemy’s position on the
Western Front; namely, the Méziéres-Sedan-Metz Railroad and the
Briey Iron Basin; it threatened the entire region between Verdun
and Nancy, and interrupted the main rail line from Paris to the east.
Its primary strength lay in the natural defensive features of the ter-
rain itself. The western face of the salient extended along the rugged,
heavily wooded eastern heights of the Meuse; the southern face fol-
lowed the heights of the Meuse for 8 kilometers to the east and then
crossed the plain of the Woevre, including within the German lines
the detached heights of Loupmont and Montsec which dominated
the plain and afforded the enemy unusual facilities for observation.
The enemy had reinforced the positon by every artificial means
during a period of four years.
On the night of September 11, the troops of the First Army were
deployed in position. On the a face of the salient was the
First Corps, Maj. Gen. Liggett, commanding, with the Eighty-second,
Ninetieth, Fifth, and Second Divisions in line, extending from the
Moselle eastward. On its left was the Fourth Corps, Maj. Gen.
Joseph T. Dickman, commanding, with the Eighty-ninth, Forty-
second, and First Divisions, the left of this corps being opposite
Montsec. These two Army Corps were to deliver the principal attack,
the line pivoting on the center division of the First Corps. The First
Division on the left of the Fourth Corps was charged with the double
mission of covering its own flank while advancing some 20 kilometers
due north toward the heart of the salient, where it was to make con-
tact with the troops of the Fifth Corps. On the western face of the
salient lay the Fifth Corps, Maj. Gen. George H. Cameron, command-
ing, with the Twenty-sixth Division, Fifteenth French Colonial
Division, and the Fourth Division in line, from Mouilly west to Les
Éparges and north to Watronville. Of these three divisions, the
Twenty-sixth alone was to make a deep advance directed southeast
toward Vigneulles. The French Division was to make a short pro-
gression to the edge of the heights in order to cover the left of the
Twenty-sixth. The Fourth Division was not to advance. In tbe
center, between our Fourth and Fifth Army Corps, was the Second
784 Over There [r918
French Colonial Corps, Maj. Gen. E. J. Blondlat, commanding, cover-
ing a front of 40 kilometers with 3 small French divisions. These
troops were to follow up the retirement of the enemy from the tip of
the salient.
The French independent air force was at my disposal which, to-
gether with the British bombing squadrons and our own air forces,
gave us the largest assembly of aviation that had ever been engaged
in one operation. Our heavy guns were able to reach Metz and to
interfere seriously with German rail movements.
At dawn on September 12, after four hours of violent artillery fire
of preparation, and accompanied by small tanks, the Infantry of the
First and Fourth Corps advanced. The infantry of the Fifth Corps
commenced its advance at 8a. m. The operation was carried out with
entire precision. Just after daylight on September 13, elements of the
First and Twenty-sixth Divisions made a junction near Hattonchatel
and Vigneulles, 18 kilometers northeast of St. Mihiel. The rapidity
with which our divisions advanced overwhelmed the enemy, and all
objectives were reached by the afternoon of September 13. The
enemy had apparently started to withdraw some of his troops from
the tip of the salient on the eve of our attack, but had been unable
to carry it through. We captured nearly 16,000 prisoners, 443 guns,
and large stores of material and supplies. The energy and swiftness
with which the operation was carried out enabled us to smother
opposition to such an extent that we suffered less than 7,000 casualties
during the actual period of the advance.
During the next two days the right of our line west of the Moselle
River was advanced beyond the objectives laid down in the original
orders. This completed the operation for the time being and the line
was stablized to be held by the smallest practicable force.
The material results of the victory achieved were very important.
An American Army was an accomplished fact, and the enemy had
felt its power. No form of propaganda could overcome the depressing
effect on the morale of the enemy of this demonstration of our ability
to organize a large American force and drive it successfully through
his defenses. It gave our troops implicit confidence in their superiority
and raised their morale to the highest pitch... . Our divisions
concluded the attack with such small losses and in such high spirits
that without the usual rest they were immediately available for em-
No. 185] The Doughboys Over the Top 785
ployment in heavy fighting in a new theater of operations. The
strength of the First Army in this battle totaled approximately 300,000
men, of whom about 70,000 were French.
Final Report of Gen. John J. Pershing (Washington, Government Printing Office,
919), 38-43 passim.
185. The Doughboys Over the Top (1918)
BY EDWIN L. JAMES
This is a first-hand account of the work of the infantry—the men in the trenches.
—For general bibliography on America in the war, see No. 171 above.
July 18, 1918.— N a front of forty kilometers, from Fontenoy
to Château-Thierry, the Americans and
French this morning launched an offensive drive against the German
positions. It was the first allied offensive of moment for more than a
year. The Americans are playing a large rôle. They are fighting in
the Soissons region, the Chateau-Thierry region, and other points
along the big front.
When the German high command started its drive Monday morn-
ing [July 15] it started more than the Kaiser planned for. The French
and Americans were entirely successful in guarding their secret and
the attack at 4:45 o’clock this morning, without one gun of artillery
preparation, took the Germans completely by surprise.
The Americans and French had an early breakfast and started out.
Then with rolling barrages ahead of them they went on. A big piece
of military work, very recent in conception, but of Foch planning,
was shown when, at the precise minute, 4:45 o’clock, the French and
Americans along nearly thirty miles of front went over the top and
against the invaders. As in halting the German drive, the Americans
were at two vital points of the allied drive—Soissons and Chateau-
Thierry—and elsewhere as well. On what.was done to the ends of
the line depended the success of the whole movement.
I was present at the fighting this morning in the Château-Thierry
region, where our boys had done so much to aid the allied cause al-
ready. Just as the whistle was blown for the doughboys to start, our
786 Over There [1918
gunners started barrages with their seventy-fives. Our troops swept
down the hill north of the Bois de Belleau toward Torcy. Shouting
as they went, the American soldiers advanced on Torcy, and at pre-
cisely 5:30 the commander reported that they had captured the town.
A little to the south other Americans swept around Belleau and
closed up. Belleau was captured at 8:20 o’clock, and by that time
German prisoners began coming back. Captured officers admitted
that the coming of the Americans had been a complete surprise.
Sweeping north the Americans charged into the Bois de Givry, and,
after a short fight with Germans, went on down Hill 193 and into the
village of Givry. Two hours later these troops had taken the town of
Montairs.
In the meanwhile other American detachments with the French
had charged the German positions in front of Courchamps and, while
held up temporarily, brought up reinforcements, chased the Germans
out of the woods, captured eighteen guns, and took possession of
Courchamps. .
A general review of this operation shows that one reason why the
Germans suffered such heavy losses in the woods forming the triangle
from Fossoy, to Mézy, to Crezancy, was that the Americans were
overwhelmed by such large numbers that the line could not hold,
but nevertheless refused to retreat where it could possibly hold a
place in the woods. This sent the German advance sweeping over
large numbers of nests which sheltered ten, five, or two Americans,
and sometimes one, who stuck while the boches passed by and then
opened up on them.
Last night tales of heroism of these men were being told. I believe
that of all of them the story of Sergeant J. F. Brown was most notable.
Brown commanded a detachment of eleven men when the German
onslaught came. They had shelter, which saved them under the heavy
German bombardment, and when the advancing boche came along
they let him pass, and then got ready to turn their machine gun loose.
But just then a hundred or more Germans came along. Brown ordered
his men to scatter quickly. He ducked into the woods, and saw the
Huns put his beloved machine gun out of the war. The Germans
passed on. Brown looked around and seemed to be alone. He
started toward the Marne, away from his own lines, and met his
Captain, also alone.
No. 185] The Doughboys Over the Top 787
These two Americans, out there in the woods in the dark, the
Captain with an automatic pistol and Brown with an automatic rifle,
saw that the boche barrage kept them from getting to their own lines,
and so decided to kill all the Germans they could before they them-
selves were killed. They lay in the thicket while the Germans passed
by in large numbers. According to Brown’s report, they heard two
machine guns going back of them, and decided to go and get them.
The two crept close and charged one of the machine guns, which
killed the American Captain. Brown got the lone German gunner
with his rifle. Then up came an American Corporal, also left alone
in the woods, and Brown and the Corporal started after the second
German machine gun, behind a clump of bushes.
They got close, and Brown with his automatic rifle killed three
Germans, the crew of the gun. Then attracted by the shooting close
at hand, up came the eleven men Brown had commanded, each looking
for Germans. Brown resumed command, and led the party to where
they could see more Germans in a sector of trench taken from the
Americans.
These thirteen Americans performed a feat never to be forgotten.
The Germans evidently were left in the trenches with machine guns
to meet a counter-attack should the Americans make one. Brown
posted his twelve men about the Hun position in twelve directions.
He took a position where he could rake the trench with his automatic
rifle. At a signal the twelve Americans opened up with their rifles
from twelve points, and Brown started working his automatic rifle.
Brown said he didn’t know how many Germans he killed, but fired
his rifle until it got so hot he couldn’t hold it, and had to rest it across
a stump. The Germans then, thinking they were attacked by a large
party, decided to surrender. A German Major stepped out of the
trench with his hands high, yelling ‘‘Kamerad!” Brown laid down
his heated rifle, and while three of the hidden Americans guarded
him, advanced toward the Major. Then all thirteen Americans moved
in and disarmed the Germans. Brown said he didn’t know how many
there were, but it was more than roo.
Then, with Brown and the Corporal at the head, and the other
eleven Americans in the rear, the procession started through the woods,
guided by a doughboy’s compass, toward the American lines. It
wasn’t plain sailing. They were behind the German advance, and
788 Over There [1918
had to pass it and a space between the fighting Germans and the
Americans. On the way through the woods several parties of Germans
saw the advancing column, with Brown and the Corporal at its head,
and hurriedly surrendered.
Beating through the thicket, Brown led his party to a place where
the German advance line was broken. Just as he started over the
American lines the Germans laid down a barrage. This got four of
the Germans, but didn’t touch an American. Brown and his twelve
comrades got back with 155 prisoners. The four killed made a total
for the thirteen Americans of 159.
American officers were almost dumfounded at the strange tale
Brown brought back, but doubt vanished when, soon after he reached
regimental headquarters, a military policeman showed up with a large
Bundle of maps and plans Brown had taken from dead German officers
killed by his automatic rifle, and, handing them to Brown, said:
“ Gimme my receipt.”
Brown, who is 23 years old, and last year was a shipping clerk, had
met this man on the way back, and, turning over the maps, which
made a heavy bundle, had stopped while he scribbled out the receipt
he demanded. Meanwhile barrage shells were falling all around.
This receipt is part of the records of the American army... .
July 21.—What a week this has been in the world’s history! A week
ago, while the French were celebrating Bastille Day, the Germans,
strong in hope because of two preceding drives, were making ready
for another great effort. On the 15th they launched an attack from
Château-Thierry to north of Châlons on a roo-kilometer front. They
crossed the Marne and moved a short distance toward their objectives.
Then, out of a clear sky, July 18, came Foch’s blow from Soissons to
Chateau-Thierry. On Thursday and Friday French and Americans
fought ahead, and then today they hit Ludendorff a body blow south
of the Marne. The week started with a formidable German offensive.
The week ends with a great allied offensive.
Americans, French, English—all the Allies—now face the fury of
the German high command, with its great military machine. That
machine is big and powerful, but it is not the machine it used to be.
The morale of the German Army is weakening from day to day.
The size of the German Army is growing surely less day by day.
The morale of the allied armies is getting better every day, and
No. 185] The Doughboys Over the Top 789
because of America the size of the allied armies is growing day by day.
The defeat of Germany is but a matter of time. How much time no
one can say. America should rejoice, but America should not be over-
confident. But for what France has to be thankful for America has a
just right to be thankful for, too.
South of Soissons, where the bitterest fighting of the week took
place, it was the Americans who had the good fortune to push the
line furthest ahead. Northwest of Chateau-Thierry, the closest point
to Paris, it fell to the Americans to push the Germans back. East
of Chateau-Thierry the Americans drove the enemy back the same
day he crossed the Marne. South of Dormans the Americans held
the German advance and helped drive the foe back. North of Châlons,
the grand objective of the Crown Prince, the Americans stood on the
plains and the boche could not pass.
It was the lot of American soldiers to be at vital points, and they
made good. It is not to be supposed that Americans were at those
points through accident. Perhaps Foch felt that the ultimate, com-
plete victory depended on what the American fighting man could do,
and perhaps he thought it best to know now. It seems but fair for
America to know and believe that after all the greatest allied gain of
this glorious week is the assurance that the American fighting man has
no superior. What tens of thousands of them have done in the last
week hundreds of thousands will do. The week has changed the na-
ture of the war from an allied defensive to an allied offensive. For the
first time in more than a year the Germans are on the defensive.
Edwin L. James, The Americans in the Second Battle of the Marne, in New York
Times Current History (September, 1918), 399-402 passim.
790 Over There [1918
186. Women with the Y. M. C. A. (1918)
BY KATHERINE MAYO
Miss Mayo is perhaps best known as the historian of the Pennsylvania State
Police. She wrote the book from which this excerpt is taken, in part with a view
to counteracting unfavorable and inaccurate reports of the work of the Y. M. C. A.
in France. For other of her writing, see note with No. roo.
N the early times, Mrs. Fitzgerald and her running mate, Miss
Heermance, had turned a wretched little tavern in the village of
Andelot into one of the most individual, charming, and successful
Y’s in France. Incidentally, they had come into long and close
relationship there with the Eighty-Ninth Division—Kansas and
Missouri boys. And although Andelot Y served as roadhouse for
troops of many commands, the Eighty-Ninth in particular had left
its warm and living impress there.
So when the underground brought word from Toul that the Eighty-
Ninth was about to move forward for the Saint-Mihiel attack, the
two ladies at Andelot, desperate, simply committed their daily job
into the hands of a pair of sympathetic doughboys and beat their
way to Toul, eighty-five kilometres distant, to tell their cherished
friends good-bye.
Days passed, each one bringing eighteen hours of work apiece to the
ladies of Andelot, till the day that brought the news: “This morning
the Eighty-Ninth went over the top.”
Then the two women looked each other square in the eye. Neither
had to phrase the question in her heart.
“You go,” said Miss Heermance at last. “You worked for them
even in their home camp. It’s your right.”
“Beside,” she added to herself, “it would kill her to keep her back
now.”
So Mrs. Fitzgerald, with her snow-white hair and her motherly
face—a woman who would have been called “on in middle life” before
people learned what life means—so Mrs. Fitzgerald once more started
out, this time alone, and to beat her way far beyond Toul, through
to the battle line.
It took her five days to get there. It was well over a hundred
kilometres, and you remember the state of the roads. Also, she
No. 186] Women with the Y. M. C. A. 791
carried with her a hundred cartons of cigarettes, a big boiler full of
chocolate powder, a lot of tinned milk, sugar, and a little stove. Her
personal luggage did not count, being all contained in her musette.
Theoretically, the thing was both irregular and impossible. But
the A. E. F. on that road knew Mother Fitzgerald well. Every second
man remembered the kindly word and smile he had got from her in the
gay little Andelot Y—remembered her dry canteen, with its rows of
canned peaches, its cookies and candy, its chewing-gum and smokes—
remembered her hearty “Go take what you want, and make your own
change. The cash box is there on the shelf before you. It’s your
own money and your own home, dear—go ahead.”
Never did the Andelot Y lose as much as one package of Bull Dur-
ham by that policy.
And now not a camion driver that could possibly make shift to give
a lift to Mother Fitzgerald on her way to the fight, would pass her
by. Not one.
Sometimes they could only take her to the next cross-road. Then
they would dump her—her and her tower of cartons, her big tin
boiler and her boxes and her stove. And there in the road, sitting on
and among her treasures, she would eagerly watch till the next truck
came along that could bring her still a bit farther on her journey.
It was on the fifth day that she overtook her children—the Three
Hundred Fifty-Third Infantry as it chanced—a Kansas outfit. In
Bouillonville, or, rather, where Bouillonville had been.
And Kansas, with the gaunt stare of battle still blank in its eyes, yet
stood among the ruins when Mother Fitzgerald dropped into its arms.
They had loved her before. They had told her good-bye—told life
and home and all they loved good-bye, through her one person. They
had left her and descended into hell.
And now—she—had followed after—she with her white hair, cast-
ing safety away as a thing of no value without them.
For no one could tell how the fight would break next. Kansas,
anyway, could not guess. It simply knew that these ruins were still
bombarded; that gas came flooding through; that masks must be
always at alert. And here was Mother Fitzgerald come to keep
house!
If they loved her before, they adored her now. But—she scared
them.
792 Over There [1918
“My dears, don’t you worry!” she purred. “Nothing that can
possibly happen now is a quarter as bad to me as staying back in
Andelot and knowing you boys are up here alone, with no one at all
to take care of you.”
And although they knew she might lose her life within the hour,
they also knew she spoke the truth.
Kansas sought out the soundest fragment of building in the town to
lodge her. It consisted of one room perhaps sixteen by twelve feet
square, more or less intact; of a second room, adjoining, possessing
three walls and a chimney; of a fairly steady stairway; and of one
chamber above. All the rest was raw, fresh ruin.
In no time, after they lodged her, Mrs. Fitzgerald was busy cook-
ing, in the room with the chimney. Boys clung around her like swarm-
ing bees. And mess-cups were filling with chocolate as fast as the
line could move.
“Come and see the billet we’ve got for her to sleep in.”
It was the room across the hall. They had swept it out as best they
could. They had salvaged an Army cot and set it up at the rear.
Then they had stretched a big blanket screen-fashion.
“ And the top-sergeant will sleep right here, right outside her cur-
tain, so nothing gets her at night.”
“But her real bedroom’s geing to be upstairs. We’re fixing it nice,
in case they leave us here for a while. We aren’t letting “er see it till
it’s done, though. Want to look?”
So eager are they to show it that only a stone could refuse.
Up the rickety stairs, then through a roofless hall, and so to “the”
room, where as many young Kansans as the space can hold are scrap-
ing walls and floors and slapping on what looks like whitewash.
“Why, you are making a job of it!”
One operating on the ceiling from a table-top looks down with an
abstracted frown:
“Well, this here was a Boche town. This was a Boche house. Does
anybody think we’re going to have Boche cooties eating Mother?”
Below stairs, the top-sergeant stands waiting.
“Do you think we do right in letting her stay here?” he asks
anxiously. “You know, it is dangerous. Anything might happen.
But—just look at her in there now, and what she’s doing for the boys—
oh, Lord! I don’t mean just the cooking! And—look here, will you?”
No. 186] Women with the Y. M. C. A. 793
Leading the way back into the second room, he points to something
green and yellow, drooping over the top of a half-smashed vase.
“See that?p—Well—Mother brought it to us. God knows how she
got through herself—her and all the stuff she packed. God knows
where she found this. But—see?—it’s a sunflower! And we—are
Kansas!—Now, could anybody else alive have done just that, but on]
Mother?”
Katherine Mayo, “That Damn Y” (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, ig20), 130-134.
CHAPTER XXXIII— WAR ON THE SEAS
187. The American Transports (1917)
BY CAPTAIN THOMAS G. FROTHINGHAM (1926)
Capt. Frothingham is an Army officer, distinguished as a naval and military
historian.—Bibliography: Albert Gleaves, History of the Transport Service. See
also, on our part in the war at sea: R. W. Kauffman, Our Navy at Work; T. B.
Kittredge, Naval Lessons; Sims and Hendrick, Victory at Sea.
HIS vital question, as to the possibility of transportation over-
seas on a large scale, was a problem for which the United States
must be the one nation to provide the answer. The need came at the
time when shipping had been so reduced, through losses inflicted by
the U-boats, that it was impossible for Allied shipping to furnish any-
where near the amount of this transportation. Allied shipping, and
of course this meant for the most part British shipping, eventually
provided the greater share of the ships which carried overseas the
troops of the American Expeditionary Forces, as will be narrated.
But it must be stated at once, as an absolute condition of the naval
situation, that, if the United States had not also been able to provide
a large part of this transportation, the whole great operation must
have failed, with fatal effect upon the war.
It seemed a desperate situation, and was in truth one of great
difficulties. That the Transport Service was hard put to charter ships
for the first expedition was evident from the list of ships given in a
preceding chapter. Yet these were the best that could be gathered
from American shipping by experts who went over the registry. The
Army transports, controlled by the Transport Service, had the fatal
defects of being slow with small bunker capacity. They were used for
other purposes, but had to be discarded for transportation of troops
over the Atlantic.
Consequently, the ships in the first expedition became the nucleus.
of the fleet of American troopships and cargo carriers of our great
1
No. 187] The American Transports 795
undertaking. It should be stated here that, before these ships of the
first groups had returned to America, one great drawback in this
service had been obviated. For the first expedition, there had been
much delay and confusion in getting the troops and their belongings
on board ship, and there had been a hectic experience at the piers.
But this was not to be repeated, as, from that time, the Army Trans-
portation Service, perfected a system for the increasing volume of
transportation which loaded ships from the piers as fast as the troops
arrived at the water-fronts.
But this first beginning of a fleet could only carry some 15,000
troops and 40,000 tons of freight, which was a small percentage of
what was needed. It will give a measure of this to state the fact that
in one month of 1918 over twenty times 15,000 troops were trans-
ported across the Atlantic. But, strangely enough, the element
which meant the turning point from failure to success was provided
by the enemy. Again, this was an example of the extraordinary over-
turns of the World War. The German merchant manne, so enthu-
siastically developed by the controlling German régime, became the
decisive weight thrown into the balance which turned the scale against
Germany.
On April 6, 1917, when the United States declared war against
Germany, there were lying in the harbors of the United States and
its colonies 104 ships of German ownership. Of these twenty were
German liners, passenger ships, best adapted to be used as troop-
ships, and many of them built with the idea of eventual use as Ger-
man transports.
Upon our declaration of war, all these German ships were seized
by the United States, following the proper precedents of international
law. After inspection, it was found that the engines of these German
ships had been wrecked, in the opinion of the Germans, beyond repair.
The United States Government had received ample warning, as
early as the Lusitania crisis in 1915, that the Germans would attempt
to disable these ships. But the status of these interned German
steamships was all in favor of damage by their own crews. An in-
terned ship remains in the possession of its owners and crew. Posses-
sion is not taken by the authorities of the nation in whose port the
ship has been interned. It was a parallel to what occurred after the
Armistice. Under the terms of this preliminary treaty of peace, the
790 War on the Seas [z917
German warships were not surrendered, but were interned at Scapa
to await their disposition under the terms of the final treaty. They
wers thus in the possession of their German crews, and, upon the
news of the final disposition of the warships of the German Fleet, the
German crews sank all these ships in Scapa Flow.
The damage done to the German steamships interned in America
in 1917 had been a definite part of the German naval program, as
stated in the memorandum of the Chief of the German Admiralty of
December 22, 1916. In this memorandum Admiral Holtzendorff ex-
pressed absolute confidence that the German steamships interned in
American ports could not be used for transportation during the
decisive months of the war, and they were thus eliminated from the
German calculations as a means of sending American troops to Ger-
many. But here, as often in the World War, German calculations did
not take into account any factor outside of the German calculations.
All of these German steamships had cylinder engines, except the
Vaterland, which had turbine engines. The German efforts were mainly
directed toward wrecking the cylinders, as the greatest harm that could
be done to a marine engine, following the idea that the one thing
impossible was to run with defective cylinders. To their minds, this
meant so extensive a need of replacement that it would involve a
delay beyond the decisive period of the war. That these cylinders
could be repaired in a short time, to be as good as new, was outside
their calculations.
Yet this was what actually happened. At first inspection the Ship-
ping Board experts had taken the pessimistic view that it was a long
replacement job before the German ships could be put into operation.
But the United States Navy, in the case of the two German auxiliary
cruisers, had recommended that the cylinders be mended by electric
welding. Upon this, the Navy Bureau of Steam Engineering was asked
to examine all the German steamships, and, after examination, recom-
mendation was made that all should be repaired by electric welding.
As a result, on July 11, 1917, the unprecedented task of repairing
sixteen damaged German steamships was turned over to the United
States Navy, and the Navy accomplished this task in an astonishingly
short time, and with an efficiency that made the job complete once and
for all. It is no wonder that at first it had been considered a hopeless
case. Cylinders had been smashed, and in many cases great pieces
No. 187] The American Transports 797
had been knocked out of them. The German crews had done every-
thing to the machinery that their minds could conceive. There was
something almost pathetic in the amount of strenuous work put in
by the Germans, and their assured complacency as to the result—only
to find that a new element, outside of the German mind, was to upset
all their calculations, and the very ships they had deemed useless were
destined to transport over 550,000 troops to fight against the Germans
at the crisis of the World War.
The success of the new process was never in doubt. The following
quotations from Admiral Gleaves’ book will give the reader at a glance
the picture of what can only be called one of the most remarkable
feats in the history of marine engineer work.
“The biggest job, of course, was the work of repairing the main
engines. This was most successfully accomplished by electro-welding
large cast steel pieces or patches on the parts of the castings which
remained intact. This was completed in a few months, whereas to
make new cylinders would have taken over a year.
“This electric welding was an engineering feat which the Germans
had not calculated on. The enemy had broken out large irregular
pieces of cylinders by means of hydraulic jacks. Where these parts
had been left in the engine room they were welded back into place, and
in cases where the pieces had been thrown overboard new castings
were made.
“Electric welding is a slow and difficult process and was carried on
day and night, Sundays and holidays, to the full capacity of the avail-
able skilled mechanics. After each casting had been welded, the cyl-
inders were machined in place,—special cutting apparatus being
rigged for the purpose. Finally each cylinder and valve chest was
thoroughly tested under hydrostatic pressure. The repairs to the
cylinders were perfectly successful. In actual trial they held up per-
fectly under hard operating conditions and there was not an instance
of the welded portion breaking away.”
This last is the true measure of this most successful exploit. It was
not a temporary makeshift job of repairs, but one that made the ma-
chinery as good as new. In fact in many cases these steamships did
better with their repaired engines than with the original engines.
The other damages to these ships, to machinery, piping, valves, wir-
ing, &c.. were repaired with the same ingenuity and dispatch. All
798 War on the Seas [1917
were ready in six months, some in a few weeks—and in many cases
the damage wrought by the Germans was repaired before the working
gang had completed the alterations necessary to change the ships
into transports for troops.
This acquisition of the German ships was the most important factor
in the solution of our great problem of transporting troops overseas.
For they were available at the very time when troops were to be sent
over in increased numbers, and afterwards for the ensuing crisis when
the maximum of numbers must be sent. The astonishing totals of
557,788 American troops transported overseas by means of these
German ships tell the whole story. This acquisition put the whole
matter of troopships on a different basis.
But the work was not yet done, as the demand for cargo ships was
growing out of all proportion to prewar ideas. This will be appreciated
when the figures are compared. At the time of the Armistice, 500,000
dead-weight tons of American shipping were engaged in carrying
supplies for the American Expeditionary Forces—that is, for every
ton carrying troops four tons were needed to carry supplies. The
public has thought of this operation too much in terms of ships carry-
ing troops. The great fleet of cargo carriers has not been taken into
consideration, but, after the gain of the German ships had thus helped
the troopship situation, the most difficult part of the operation was
to get hold of enough cargo carriers.
As a first step toward an increase of American shipping for this
purpose, the United States Shipping Board, on August 3, 1917, req-
uisitioned at the shipyards all steel vessels of 2,500 deadweight tons
or over, which were then under construction. This assertion of emi-
nent domain, though ultimately of great effect, was not the only
official act which immediately added the most tonnage to the Gov-
ernment’s merchant fleet. On October 15, 1917, the Shipping Board
commandeered all commissioned and going American steel cargo
steamers of 2,500 deadweight tons or over, and also all American
passenger vessels of more than 2,500 gross tons that were suitable for
foreign service. “This action added instantly to the federal marine
408 merchant vessels, of more than 2,600,000 deadweight tons.”
Every effort was also made to acquire foreign tonnage, by seizure
of enemy ships, by charter of enemy ships seized by others in the war,
by purchase and charter from neutrals, by granting privileges for
No. 188] How it Feels to be Torpedoed 799
export in exchange for chartered tonnage, and by seizure of neutral
tonnage in our ports. But it should be frankly stated that things
were going very badly in respect to cargo carriers in the first six
months of our participation in the war, not only from the scarcity
of ships, but also from the confused situation as to allocating the
available tonnage among the demands of the various industrial activi-
ties and the needs of the armed forces.
Thomas G. Frothingham, The Naval History of The World War (Cambridge,
Harvard University Press, 1926), IH, 149-158 passim.
188. How it Feels to Be Torpedoed (1917)
BY ALBERT KINROSS
Bibliography as in No. 187 above.
HE first torpedo struck us at a few minutes past ten o’clock in
the morning. I was down below in the saloon with E. We had
both kept a boat-watch during the night and were the last officers to
come to breakfast.
The saloon was a fine, large place, with lots of glass and tables and
white-jacketed stewards. Above, on the decks, the men and most of
the officers had fallen in at dawn and were to remain alert during our
passage through the danger zone. A couple of Japanese destroyers,
one to port and one to starboard, formed our escort. Our course was
a series of zigzags at fourteen knots per hour by day and rather more
at night.
E. and I ate our bacon and eggs and drank our coffee. The steward
waiting on us was a clean-shaven little fellow who looked much like a
low comedian. When the torpedo struck, there was no mistaking it
for anything else. E. and I laughed, as much as to say: “‘Here she
is!” Then I put on my cork belt, asked myself whether any part of
me had suffered in the explosion, and received a confident answer,
and next I leaped up the three flights of stairs that led to the liner’s
deck and my own boat-station.
E. raced with me. I have never seen him since. He had a lovable
800 War on the Seas [1917
habit of mothering people. I dare say it cost him his life. There is
something specially tragical about this officer’s disappearance. He
was the last of three brothers. Two had died gallantly in France,
and so that one of her boys might be spared to the bereaved mother,
E. had been taken out of the trenches and given a “safe” job at the
base; yet even so the Fates had followed him.
The stewards and cooks raced with us too. There was something
theatrical and cinema-ish about that picture—so many white jackets
and blue uniform trousers and white overalls.
All this time—it might have been a couple of minutes—the greater
part of me was so active that I have no recollection of any instant
devoted to fear. Crude and horrible as it may sound, there was a
large portion of my consciousness which was most vividly and de-
lightedly enjoying itself. . . .
Just picture us, on a great liner, cosey as a grand hotel. Every-
thing was remote from war and death, as I have seen them so con-
stantly on land these last three years. No mud, no dirt, no continuity.
And we were all at ease and leading civilian lives, with bathrooms,
linen sheets, and even an American bar! I don’t know why, but I
had imagined it all quite differently.
As one rushed up-stairs one thought of things one had valued yes-
terday—two brand-new pairs of boots, one’s field-glasses, some money
—they seemed now so utterly of no account. Providence must have
been with me, for, arrived on deck, I stood flush before my boat,
Number 13. I stood there and took charge. To left of me the right
people were busy with our sixty-six sisters. These ladies were part of
the staff of a new hospital unit. Safely they were put into their boats,
safely lowered, and safely rowed away from us. We cheered them as
they left, and they cheered back. Then Tommy, lined on deck,
struck up a song. He always does in moments of emotion.
Thad filled my boat as full as it would go. All was ready. I stepped
on board and gave the signal. Then slowly we descended. Above
our heads one of the ship’s officers was seeing to it that we went down
all right. Immediately below us was another boat. It pushed off at
last, and now we were free to hit the water. Before we pushed off I
took on five of the crew who had helped to lower us. They swarmed
down the ropes and reached us safely. Then I refused to take any-
body else and we got the oars out and rowed away. Only then did
No. 188] How it Feels to be Torpedoed 801
I notice that the ship had stopped dead. She looked perfectly steady,
like a ship anchored. .. .
So we floated, one of many little units, on those waters; and for a
long time we were kept passionately interested by what we saw.
Speaking for myself, I have never lived through moments so tense,
so big, so charged with all extremes and textures of emotion.
The big ship—she was near to 15,000 tons—stood like an island,
and as if she could stand forever. While one of our destroyers went
away on an unknown quest, the other drew alongside. We saw the
little khaki figures swarm into her, and, to be frank, we envied them.
Then the destroyer manceuvred, and there was a flash and an explo-
sion. A second torpedo had struck and the Japanese commander had
just dodged it. We now saw that his mast was broken and his wire-
less installation was sagging. But still the great ship stood there like
an island... .
That moment passed, as did many another. I remember especially
seeing another boat with only five men on board, four rowing gayly
past us, the fifth baling. It seemed to us a horrible injustice, and sev-
eral of my men said so aloud. I negatived the proposition, however,
that we should get alongside and in part transfer. We seemed all
right, and it struck me as best to leave well enough alone.
There followed next the most dramatic period of that spectacle.
So far the great ship had stood firm, as if anchored. We noticed now
that she had a definite list to starboard. The angle grew steeper, and
then suddenly her bow dropped, her stern lifted, and next she slid
to the bottom like a diver. It was as though a living thing had dis-
appeared beneath the waves. We watched her, open-mouthed, a
tightness at our hearts. We missed the comfort of her presence, we
felt the tragedy of her surrender. In her death and engulfment there
was a something more than human. So might a city built by count-
less hands and quick with life pass suddenly away. From somewhere
in the middle of her bled a great puff of smoke, and I noticed that her
deck as she stood on end, one half of her submerged, was bare and
naked. It might have been a ballroom floor. .. .
Albert Kinross in Atlantic Monthly, December, 1917. (Boston.)
802
War on the Seas
189. The Destroyers (1918)
BY ENOS B. COMSTOCK
[1918
Destroyer squadrons were largely used for convoy work; this poem celebrates
their performance. On destroyers, see also No. 55 above.
OD gathered the salt sea waters
And wrapped them around the world;
The gales broke free,
And they swept the sea,
And the giant waves unfurled.
Then man made friends with the waters,
As the ages took their flight,
For the sullen deep
Was a friend to keep
In its wild, unfettered might.
But it isn’t the wrath of the ocean,
When a nation wages war—
When he steeps the sea
In his treachery—
Then it is something more.
Beneath us the great ship pounded
In ceaseless monotone,
Driving her way
Through the lashing spray—
On to the danger zone.
They said the destroyers would meet us—
The men of the transport’s crew;
They told us, then,
Just where and when—
The men of the transport knew.
No. 189] The Destroyers 803
For out of the gray of the morning,
Where the cold waves climbed the sky,
What magical force
Had guided their course?
When will that picturce die!
Now lost in a trough of the ocean,
Now poised on a foaming crest,
Now driving the prow
Of a steel-clad bow
Deep in a great wave’s breast.
And we, who were new to the water,
We wondered that this could be;
This, then, was their play,
And they seemed to say,
These terriers of the sea:
“We’ll see you safe, big brother,
Where the foul sea-demons wait;
We'll stay with you
And we'll see you through,
With your load of human freight.”
Then here’s to the sailors that met us,
And here’s to their crafts of steel!
With the grace of a gull
In their shapely hull,
And forty knots in their keel!
Enos B. Comstock, in St. Nicholas, October, 1918 (New York, Century Co.),
rol.
804 War on the Seas [1918
190. U-Boat Raids off the American Coast (1918)
BY CAPTAIN THOMAS G. FROTHINGHAM
For Frothingham and for bibliography, see No. 187 above.
©) the American side of the Atlantic careful preparations had
been made to guard against U-boats attacks, which were re-
garded as inevitable sooner or later. Of course the main task must
be to safeguard the egress of the convoys. If the Germans had been
able to interrupt these by operations of their U-boats in the Western
Atlantic, it would have saved the whole situation for Germany. But
it should be stated at once that the German attempts with their sub-
marines off the American coasts never brought about the slightest
delay in the rush of troops to France. Much less was there even
the threat of an interruption.
Precautions for the safety of the convoys were unremitting. There
was never any relaxation of vigilance throughout the many months
in which there were no signs of the presence of U-boats. The channels
of sailing were as carefully swept, and the convoys as vigilantly
guarded by anti-submarine forces, as if there had been frequent
U-boat attacks. The decision had been wisely made not to allow this
escort duty on our side of the Atlantic to prevent any great number of
destroyers from going overseas, and very few destroyers were retained
for this service in the Western Atlantic. But the watch over the con-
voys was all the more painstaking from the very fact that it had to be
carried on without them.. It was here that the new submarine chasers
were of value, and a large force of these craft was especially trained
for this purpose. The energetic and adaptable young men who made
up the personnel of this naval force performed a most arduous duty,
as their activities extended from Halifax to Key West, and few realize
what an experience of wind and weather this involved.
Upon our declaration of war, the Coast Guard had become a part
of the Naval Establishment for war duty, in accordance with an act
of Congress of 1915. Its cruising cutters had been given more power-
ful guns, and a number of them were sent overseas. The rest rendered
most valuable service in this great undertaking of patrolling the
Western Atlantic. They were well adapted to our waters and were
No. 190] U-Boat Raids off the American Coast 805
an important part of the system of cruisers and mother ships which
supported the anti-submarine small craft.
The first appearance of German U-boats in the Western Atlantic
was heralded by sudden attacks on shipping off the Delaware Capes.
Two coastwise schooners were sunk on May 25, 1918, and there were
sinkings in the first days of June, most of them on June 2 when seven
vessels were sunk. These were coastwise craft, mainly schooners,
with the steamship Carolina of 5000 tons the most important loss.
There were renewed attacks in July, especially off Cape Cod, and
again in August. On August Io no less than nine coastwise schooners
were sunk from 50 to 60 miles off Nantucket. “The appearance of
enemy submarines in these waters necessitated the putting into effect
of the convoy system for coastwise shipping and for the protection
of individual ships engaged in the coastwise trade.” “To forestall
enemy submarine operations in the Gulf and Caribbean, a force was
established called the American Patrol Force, and its headquarters
was in the vicinity of Key West. ... As was foreseen, the pro-
tection of the oil supplies from the Gulf to our own coast and then
abroad was quite vital to the success of the general campaign, and
these supplies the patrol detachment was prepared to safeguard by
adopting at once the convoy system the instant they were threatened.”
Consequently, the German U-boat attacks never won success
beyond these depredations against coastwise and incoming individual
vessels. The U-boats never came near threatening the regular con-
voys, which were thus protected by sweeping their channels clear
cf the mines which the Germans spread, and guarded by escorting
patrols of anti-submarine craft. These last were constantly hunting
the U-boats with listening devices and depth bombs.
“On the whole the operations of the German submarines against
our coast can be spoken of as one of the minor incidents of the
war. ...” That these futile U-boat attacks can be thus dismissed,
is evident from the fact that transportation of troops instead of being
diminished leapt to the great totals, which have been given, in the
very months of these attacks. Only one American fighting ship was
jost off our coast, the armored cruiser San Diego of the Cruiser and
Transport Force. She was sunk by a mine off Fire Island on July 19,
1918, with the loss of six lives, three of these from the explosion.
Not only did these German raids with the U-boats against the
806 War on the Seas [1918
American coast fail to produce any impression that would make us
retain naval forces on this side of the Atlantic, but the Germans thus
failed absolutely in what must be considered their one necessary ob-
ject in these U-boat attack—to break the chain of communications
which was bringing and sustaining the American reinforcement that
meant ruin to the confident military plans of the Germans. The
American Expeditionary Forces remained successfully “based on the
American Continent.” The full measure of German failure was the
fact that not one American troopship was torpedoed. And this
meant German failure, not only in American waters, but also in the
other stages of transportation to the final destination at the ports of
disbarkation overseas.
It would be well here to describe the losses in this service, in order
to show beyond any question their small effect upon the great volume
of American troops which at this stage of the World War poured
into France without hindrance from the enemy. In addition to the
San Diego, the only fighting ship of any size lost by the United States
Navy, our Navy lost the destroyer Jacob Jones, the armed converted
yacht Alcedo, the collier Cyclops, and the Coast Guard cutter Tampa
taken over by the Navy.
The Jacob Jones was torpedoed December 6, 1917, when on her way
alone from off Brest to Queenstown. The Alcedo was one of the Amer-
ican armed yachts in French waters, and she was sunk by a U-boat
while acting as convoy escort off the coast of France, November 5,
1917. The loss of the collier Cyclops was another of the many mysteries
of the seas. She had reported at Barbadoes March 4, 1918, for coal,
and left for Baltimore. She was never heard from again. The Tampa
was one of the six Coast Guard cutters overseas, which performed
valuable services in the force of the United States Navy based at
Gibraltar for escort and protection of conveys. She was acting as
escort for a convoy from Gibraltar when she was destroyed in the
Bristol Channel on the night of September 26, 1918. “Vessels follow-
ing heard an explosion, but when they reached the vicinity there were
only bits of floating wreckage to show where the ship had gone down.
Not one of the 111 officers and men of her crew was rescued. . . .”
Of the transports carrying American troops overseas, the most
notable loss from enemy attack was the Tuscania (14,348 tons), a
chartered Cunard liner under the British convoy system. She was
No. 190] U-Boat Raids off the American Coast 807
torpedoed off the Irish coast on February 5, 1918, with the loss of 166
missing. The British chartered transport Moldavia was also sunk,
with the loss of 56 lives. The unbroken record of immunity of the
American troopships on their voyages to Europe was not maintained
on their homeward voyages. Three of these American transports,
Antilles, President Lincoln, Covington, were sunk on their way back to
American ports, with loss of life in each case. The Mount Vernon
(late German liner Kronprinzessen Cecile) and the Finland were
torpedoed on homeward voyages, but each reached port and was re-
paired for service. The British chartered steamship Dvinsk was
torpedoed and sunk on a homeward voyage.
These losses, compared with the great numbers of troopships, which
were plying between the United States and Europe to deliver the
American reinforcement on the battlefield in France, show most
strikingly that the Germans were not accomplishing any appreciable
results, so far as concerned preventing this reinforcement from being
thrown against their armies on the Western Front. In fact, the battle
in France was actually being won on the seas.
Thomas G. Frothingham, The Naval History of the World War (Cambridge,
Harvard University Press, 1926), IHI, 223-228 passim.
BARA
AFTERMATH OF THE WAR
CHAPTER XXXIV — THE ARMISTICE
AND PEACE
191. The Armistice (1918)
FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES CURRENT HISTORY
Germany’s allies had weakened: Bulgaria and Turkey had given up the struggle;
Austria-Hungary was on the verge of breaking up. When overtures were made for
an armistice, however, President Wilson declined to enter on its negotiation until
he had assurance that ‘‘a government of the people” had been established in Ger-
many. This meant that the Kaiser and the military party must be out of the pic-
ture.—For general bibliography of America in the war, see No. 171 above.
HE war came to an end on Monday, Nov. 11, 1918, at rz o’clock
A. M., French time; 6 o’clock, Washington time. The armistice,
which was imposed upon Germany by the Allies and the United
States, was signed by the German plenipotentiaries at 5 o’clock A. M.,
Paris time; midnight, Washington time.
The conclusion of the armistice followed within three weeks after
the dispatch of a note from the German Government to President
Wilson, in which it was affirmed that a fundamental change had been
made in the German Government in “complete accord with the prin-
ciple of the representation of the people based on equal, universal,
secret, direct franchise,” with the further announcement that orders
had been issued to submarine commanders precluding the torpedoing
of passenger ships, and asking that steps be taken to arrange an
armistice which would contain no “demand which would be irrecon-
808
No. 191] The Armistice 80¢
cilable with the honor of the German people and with the opening
of the way to a peace of justice.” This note was dispatched on Oct.
2 LO mos
On Oct. 23 President Wilson replied by agreeing to take up witk
the Allies the question of an armistice, but said the only armistice
which he would submit for consideration would be one that would
leave the Allies in a position to enforce any arrangement entered
into and make a renewal of hostilities by Germany impossible, with
the significant addition that if the Government of the United States
“must deal with the military masters and the monarchical autocrats
of Germany now, or if it is likely to have to deal with them later in
regard to the international obligations of the German Empire, it must
demand, not peace negotiations, but surrender.”
On Oct. 25 the German War Cabinet considered the reply of the
President, and the note was discussed in sectional meetings of the
Reichstag members. It was at this juncture that the first mutterings
of serious discontent with the Government reached the outside world.
On Oct. 25 a dispatch was allowed to go from Berlin stating that an
enormous crowd had assembled before the Reichstag buiiding calling
for the abdication of the Kaiser and the formation of a republic. That
the then existing Government did not contemplate the surrender of
Alsace-Lorraine was indicated by a statement made by the Foreign
Secretary, Dr. Solf, to the Reichstag that “the Cabinet would con-
tinue the reforms already undertaken in the government of Alsace-
Lorraine, but would not anticipate the solution of that problem.”
The Foreign Secretary contended that “Polish annexation de-
mands were not in accordance with the peace program ot President
Wilson.”
A vote of confidence was given the Chancellor by the Reichstag
on this day, the vote standing 193 to 52.
On Oct. 27 another note was sent President Wilson by the German
Foreign Secretary declaring that far-reaching changes had occurred
in Germany’s constitutional structure and that peace negotiations
were being carried forward by the people’s Government, “in whose
hands rests, both actually and constitutionally, the power to make the
deciding conclusions,” and closing with the statement that “the
German Government now awaits the proposals for an armistice.”
On Oct. 28 matters were advanced by receipt of a note from the
810 The Armistice and Peace [1918
Austrian Government declaring that all the conditions laid down
by the President for the entry into negotiations for an armistice were
accepted. This note was followed on the 29th by another from
the Austrian Government urging that the negotiations for an armistice
be hurried, thus indicating that Austria’s complete surrender had
been decided upon.
Meanwhile in Berlin the Crown Council was practically in con-
tinuous session under the Presidency of Emperor William and pro-
found agitation was observed among Reichstag members and extreme
nervousness in German military circles. . .
On Oct. 31 the representatives of the allied Governments held a
formal meeting at Versailles to consider the armistice terms for
Austria, which would foreshadow the terms to be submitted to
Germany... .
The Supreme War Council resumed its sessions at Versailles on
Nov. 1 to consider the armistice terms which would be submitted to
Austria and Germany... .
The conference continued its sessions daily, and during this period
the political unrest in Germany continued to develop fresh intensity,
with extreme agitation in all the larger cities and more pronounced
and insistent demands by popular assemblies for the abdication of the
Kaiser. During all this time the allied armies on the western front
from the North Sea to Switzerland continued to deliver hammer blows
on the shattered German lines and the latter were steadily retreating
from Belgium and France with enormous losses.
On Nov. 3 the armistice with Austria was signed in the field, im-
posing drastic terms, and on the same day the German Kaiser issued
a decree addressed to the German Imperial Chancellor in which he
accepted the transfer of “fundamental rights of the Kaiser’s person
to the people.” and acknowledged the adoption of the changes in the
German Government which had been demanded by the Allies. The
reports, however, indicated that he was firmly resisting the pressure
coming from all sides that he abdicate.
On Nov. 4 the drastic terms of the Austrian armistice were made
public and at the same time it was officially announced that the
allied Governments and the United States had come to a complete
agreement on the terms Germany must accept.
On Nov. 5 a note was handed to the Swiss Minister, who represented
No. 191] The Armistice Sir
Germany at Washington, by Secretary of State Lansing, in which he
stated that Marshal Foch had been authorized to receive German
delegates and to communicate to them the terms of an armistice.
The German Government took instant action. On Nov. 6, it was
announced from Berlin that a German delegation to conclude an
armistice and take up peace negotiations had left for the western
frontis
The German plenipotentiaries sent to receive the armistice terms
from Marshal Foch arrived at allied General Headquarters, Nov. 8,
at 6 A. M. The terms were delivered to them, with a formal demand
that they be accepted or refused within seventy-two hours.
A message from the German envoys to the Imperial Chancellor and
the German high command, sent by the French wireless, was picked
up at London Nov. 8. It asked that a courier be sent back as soon as
possible with instructions. ...
The delegates crossed the allied line near La Capelle late on the
night of Nov. 7. The white-flag bearers reached the left wing of Gen-
eral Debeney’s army at ro P. M. They arrived at the place indicated
by the allied supreme commander within the French lines about 2
o’clock A. M., Nov. 8, and passed the remainder of the night there.
They were taken to a house at Rethondes, six miles east of Compiégne
and thirty miles from Marshal Foch’s headquarters, where prepara-
tions had been made to receive them.
The automobiles conveying the delegates carried white flags and
were preceded by a trumpeter. Some French soldiers under an officer
approached them on the road just outside the lines.
The delegates established their identity and showed their creden-
tials. The members of the German party were then blindfolded and
the delegates proceeded to the place where they spent the night.
Generals Winterfeld and von Griinnel wore uniforms of the rank of
General. Von Salow was in the uniform of an Admiral of the fleet.
Mathias Erzberger and Count von Oberndorff were in plain civilian
dress.
They stayed over night at the house to which they were conducted,
and were then taken to a place in the Department of the Aisne, which
was the meeting place fixed by Marshal Foch. This trip required
about four hours.
The delegates were received by Marshal Foch at Rethondes at a
812 The Armistice and Peace [1918
o’clock on the morning of Nov. 8, in a railroad car, in which the Com-
mander in Chief of the allied force had his headquarters.
When the Germans’ credentials had been opened and verified,
Mathias Erzberger, leader of the enemy delegation, speaking in French,
announced that the German Government had been advised by Presi-
dent Wilson that Marshal Foch was qualified to communicate to them
the Allies’ conditions and had appointed them plenipotentiaries to
take cognizance of the terms and eventually sign an armistice.
Marshal Foch then read the terms in a loud voice, dwelling upon
each word. The Germans were prepared by semi-official communica-
tions for the stipulations as a whole, but hearing set forth in detail
the concrete demands seemed to bring to them for the first time full
realization of the extent of the German defeat.
They made a few observations, merely pointing out material diffi-
culties standing in the way of carrying out some quite secondary
clauses. Then Erzberger asked for a suspension of hostilities in the
interests of humanity. This request Marshal Foch flatly refused.
The delegates, having obtained permission to send a courier to
Spa and communicate with that place by wireless, withdrew. Mar-
shal Foch immediately wrote an account of the proceedings and sent
it by an aid to Premier Clemenceau, who received it at noon.
With the Commander in Chief at the time of the interview were
Major Gen. Maxime Weygand, his assistant; Vice Admiral Sir Rosslyn
Wemyss, First Lord of the British Admiralty, and the American Vice
Admiral, William S. Sims. Admiral Sims took no part in the nego-
tiations and soon afterward returned to London.
When the French command received the German headquarters’
wireless dispatch announcing the start of the armistice delegation, the
delegates were directed to present themselves between 8 and 10
o’clock P. M., Nov. 7, at a certain point on La Capelle road. The
crossroad was clearly marked by the beams of several searchlights.
At the same time the order was given in the French lines that hos-
tilities should be suspended over a distance of several miles in the
region of the meeting place.
The three automobiles bearing the German delegates arrived at
g:15 P. M. at the crossroad, preceded by a group of German pioneers
charged with making the shell-damaged road passable. The German
delegates were received by officers whom Marshal Foch had sent to
No. 191] The Armistice 813
guide them. These officers got in the automobiles, and, with the
window curtains drawn, proceeded to the Chateau Francfort in Com-
piégne Forest, belonging to the Marquis de l’Aigle.
Owing to the lateness of the hour, the delegates were conducted to
the apartments assigned them, where they took refreshments. The
next morning they again entered the automobiles and were taken to
the station at Rethondes, where they found Marshal Foch in his
special train.
The abdication of the Kaiser and the revolution in Germany oc-
curred the day following the receipt of the armistice terms, Nov. 9,
but no decision was announced respecting the acceptance of the
armistice.
The German courier bearing the text of the armistice conditions
arrived at German headquarters at ro o’clock A. M., Nov. ro. The
courier, Captain Helldorf, was long delayed while the German bat-
teries persisted in bombarding the route he had to follow.
The German delegates had suggested on Nov. 9, that the courier’s
mission might be attempted by airplane. The French high command
saw no objection to this and offered to furnish a machine on condition
that the German high command pledge itself that the airplane would
not be fired at. A rapid message was sent to German headquarters,
which was replied to without delay as follows:
“We grant free passage to the French airplane bringing our courier.
We are issuing orders that it shall not be attacked by any of our ma-
chines. For the purpose of recognition it should carry two white
flags very clearly marked.”
The orders from the German headquarters staff, however, were
inoperative as regarded the land batteries, for on La Capelle road
the enemy’s fire, despite reiterated requests to desist, went on without
intermission.
A French airplane, piloted by an officer of the French Air Service,
was soon available, and the pilot was ordered to hold himself ready
to start on his journey. About that time a message came from Gen-
eral Headquarters, announcing that orders for the cessation of fire
had been given to the batteries directed against La Capelle road, and
that Captain Helldorf was at liberty to start by automobile. Almost
immediately the German fire ceased, and the courier set out on the
road for Spa at 3:20 o’clock in the afternoon.
814 The Armistice and Peace [r919
German headquarters was notifed of his departure, and informed
that he might be expected to arrive in the evening. But the road was
long and hard, and many delays occurred.
Nineteen hours after the German courier reached the German
headquarters—at 5 o’clock A. M. Paris time, Nov. 11—the armistice
was signed and the official announcement was made at Washington
at 2:40 A. M., Nov. 11, by the Secretary of State. President Wilson
was notified immediately by telephone.
Staff article in New York Times Current History, December, 1918 (New York),
355-300 passim.
SSS
192. Peace Conference at Versailles (1919)
BY PROFESSOR JOHN SPENCER BASSETT (1926)
Bassett (1867-1928) was Professor of History at Smith College, and author of a
number of volumes of historical significance. His account of the election of 1924
is given in No. 197 below. President Wilson s tremendous personal power made
him the outstanding individual at the Versailles Conference; but it proved impos-
sible to maintain unselfish principles of statesmanship against the competition of
European leaders who insisted on the spoils of war. On the problem of reparations
payments, the outgrowth of Allied demands, etc., see No. 208 below.—Bibliog-
raphy: biographies of Wilson listed in No. 129 above; Haskins and Lord, Some
Problems of the Peace Conference; House and Seymour, What Really Happened at
Paris; Robert Lansing, The Big Four at Paris; H. V.Temperly, History of the Peace
Conference; C. T. Temperly, The Peace Conference Day by Day.
RESIDENT WILSON did not originate the idea of a League of
Nations. He merely uttered the thought of many others who but
desired one in authority to take it up. Wilson’s part was that he made
it his chief policy of state and carried it through the Peace Conference
against the opposition of the old diplomatic school.
In order to do this he decided to go to Paris himself as head of our
Peace Commission. The suggestion shocked many people, and his
political opponents attributed it to a desire to play a conspicuous
part in the negotiations. Yet it seems certain that if he had not gone
to Paris there would have been no League. The other members of
the Commission were Robert Lansing, Secretary of State, Henry
White, formerly an ambassador to France, and described by Roosevelt
as “the most useful diplomat in the American service,” Colonel
No. 192] Peace Conference at Versailles 815
Edward M. House, up to this time a personal adviser of the President,
and General Tasker H. Bliss, representing the army. The Commission
sailed from New York, December 4, 1918, and arrived at Paris on the
14th.
At that time the position of the United States was high in the world’s
esteem. Our country had once been considered a clever commercial
nation, rich in goods and too new to fight. In a year and a half it
had thrown 2,000,000 splendid fighting men into the European strug-
gle, spent wealth and blood as freely as the exigencies of war demanded,
and furnished the final energy that turned the scales in the conflict.
The Americans were hailed at Paris as the saviors of the world. At
their head was President Wilson, whose eloquent speeches had been
read with intense sympathy since the nation entered the war; and
who arrived in Europe with a message that was to make wars impos-
sible. He was madly acclaimed wherever he went in Europe. Few
men stopped to think how difficult a task he had given himself. To
establish a régime of peace meant that he would oppose some of the
dearest national designs of other peoples; and in doing so he could
not help arousing bitter opposition.
Thirty-nine powers, including the British Dominions, came to the
Conference to help write the terms of humiliation for Germany and
her allies, and to make the world safe against their future aggression.
Most of them had in mind definite demands and considered them
entirely just and reasonable. These nations were prepared, if neces-
sary, to make combinations among themselves in the old world-
congress manner, in order to get what they wished. The only great
nation at the Conference that was not seeking advantages for itself
was the United States. That was because we were too rich to need
Europe’s money and too much isolated to be concerned with European
territorial rivalries. Wilson’s only demand for new arrangements was
the League of Nations, and he asked that because he thought it was
for the good of all.
The five powers in attendance which had done most of the fight-
ing—Great Britain, France, Italy, Japan, and the United States—
must of necessity assume most of the responsibility for making Ger-
many fulfil the treaty which she must sign. It was natural that they
should take the lead in the discussions, and also in the results of the
Conference.
816 The Armistice and Peace [1919
Hence most of the questions were first decided by the representa-
tives of these five powers; and the decisions were then referred to
plenary sessions of the whole Conference, where they were approved.
Two persons represented each of the five powers, and this small body
became known as the Council of Ten. Experience showed that ten
were too many, and the Council was finally composed of only one
representative from each power; and since Japan did not attend un-
less Asiatic or Pacific-Ocean matters were up, most of the business
was done by the other members, who came to be known as the “Big
Four.” These powerful personages were Clemenceau, for France,
Lloyd George, for Great Britain, Orlando, for Italy, and Wilson, for
the United States.
The position of Wilson among these men was peculiar. Each of
the others was Prime Minister in his own country, each had the sup-
port of his Parliament, and each believed that what he did was going
to be approved by his government. Wilson was the man charged by
the Federal Constitution to act for his nation, either by appointees or
in person, in making the treaty; and yet he did not represent the
Senate, the body that would have to approve the treaty. Frequently
a President had negotiated a treaty which the Senate had rejected,
but they were always times when the other party was a single state.
Now, however, we were called upon to sit in with a Conference of
many states. The treaty would have to be such as all would sign:
it would necessarily be a compromise made on the spot after confer-
ence with the other powers. The ratifying power in the United States
could take no part in such a compromise. Wilson was therefore put
to the necessity of doing the best he could under the circumstances,
trusting to the future to get ratification. As compared with his col-
leagues at Paris he was in an awkward situation, dependent upon
future events in his own country.
The deliberations of the Conference had not gone far when it be-
came evident that the European Powers thought little of the Fourteen
Points. It has been said that they threw them over entirely, which
is not strictly true; but they pared some of them down and ignored
some entirely. The Germans, who were not allowed to take part in
the early deliberations, only waiting to know what would be de-
manded from them, were greatly offended by this action. They had
surrendered on the basis of the Fourteen Points and naturally felt
No. 192] Peace Conference at Versailles 817
they had been deceived after putting themselves beyond the ability
to resist. Here was laid the foundation of a deep hostility to Wilson,
who, they said, should have left the Conference when it refused to
do what he had assured Germany it would do.
Wilson soon realized that he could not get the Allies to do all they
had promised to do. But he thought that if the League of Nations
was established in good faith, it would bring about in time all the
omitted advantages of his propostition. Accordingly he gave him-
self to the preparation and adoption of the Covenant of the League,
a draft of which was presented to the Conference in plenary session,
February 14, 1919. It was not considered at the time, and Wilson
departed the next day for Washington, to be present at the approach-
ing close of the Congress. He hoped also to be able to allay to some
extent the rising tide of objection to the League in the United States,
a hope which the attitude of a Senate in the hands of his political
enemies did not warrant.
There was no time to argue the point before his departure. At
Paris things began to go against him as soon as he was out of the
city. March 5, the day after Congress adjourned, he sailed again for
France, arriving to find that the League had been sidetracked. Dur-
ing his absence a vote was passed to decide upon the other matters
in the treaty before deciding upon the League. This, it was believed,
would mean the defeat of an efficient League. Moreover, it was con-
trary to a vote of January 25, taken through Wilson’s insistence, that
the League should be considered an integral part of the treaty.
The reversal of this vote in his absence was a blow at the President
and he took occasion after his return to say that reports that the
League was to be deferred until the treaty was completed were in-
correct and that the vote of January 25 was final.
It was an evidence of his great power in the conferences of the
“Big Four” that his interpretation of the situation was allowed to
stand. By fighting to the utmost, by never giving up the demand
that the Covenant should be part of the treaty, and by finally threat-
ening to withdraw from the Conference he was able to force Lloyd
George, Clemenceau, and Orlando to accept his view; and when the
treaty of peace was complete it contained the Covenant of the League
of Nations. Whatever one thinks about Wilson and the League, it is
necessary to admit that he won a hard battle in forcing it into the
818 The Armistice and Peace [1919
treaty. As an additional check on Germany President Wilson agreed
to recommend that the United States make a three-power treaty
with France and Great Britain for the enforcement of the Treaty of
Versailles. This recommendation was made by the President but the
Senate did not accept it.
The main features of the Covenant were: (1) The chief power was
to rest with a council of nine members, one chosen from each of the
five Great Powers, Great Britain, France, Italy, Japan, and the
United States, and four others, chosen by the Assembly from time
to time. (2) An assembly in which each member state was to have
one vote. Since five of Great Britain’s colonies were members of the
Conference this arrangement provided for six votes that were British
in sympathy, a provision that aroused much feeling among all who
disliked an extensive British influence. (3) A permanent World
Court with the power to decide international cases, the League stand-
ing in a position to see that its decisions were executed. (4) In Arti-
cle X it was provided that each state should guarantee the territorial
integrity of every other state in the League. (5) In case a member
of the League was about to make war on another member the Council
would investigate, and if its decisions were violated the other mem-
bers were pledged to impose economic restrictions, or even to make
war against it, until it was willing to accept the arbitrament of the
League. The object was to create a power strong enough to make
reason take the place of force in the settlement of disputes that or-
dinarily lead to war.
In matters strictly European, Wilson did not at first take so strong
a part. But when he realized the mass of intrigue for gain that filled
the Conference he took a stronger stand. In order to keep the con-
quered German and Turkish colonies from falling into the hands of
Britain, France and Japan, he got them recognized as “manda-
tories” to be administered by nations to whom the League should
assign them. .
Wilson also asked that reparation payments should be based upon
Germany’s ability to pay and that the amount should be fixed in
the treaty. This provision he did not obtain. Lloyd George and
Clemenceau had made excessive promises to their people about forc-
ing Germany to pay for the war, though they knew it was impossible.
They did not dare face their people with a fixed amount representing
No. 192] Peace Conference at Versailles 819
what Germany could pay. It was accordingly provided that she
should pay for all damages inflicted on civilians, in all pensions granted
on account of the war; and for all “separation allowances,” 7. e., al-
lowances to families of Allied soldiers in active service. A Reparation
Commission was to assess the actual amounts by May 1, 1921. Much
rouble arose when it was attempted to execute this feature of the
treaty. vris
On the demand of Japan in the East, Wilson had not the support
of Britain and France, and he was, therefore, in a more awkward
position. Early in the war Japan took Shantung from Germany,
and Japan remained in a position menacing to China. Wilson tried
to get her to hand it over to China, from whom it was taken by Ger-
many in 1898 under contract made through duress. Japan promised
to give up Shantung, retaining some economic privileges and the right
to establish a settlement there. She would not make the promise in
writing, claiming her word was sufficient, although in other matters
written promises were given and demanded by her. Japan had made
special treaties with Britain and France, who supported her in her
contention, ard Wilson was obliged to content himself with her verbal
assurance. China, however, was not satisfied and refused to sign the
treaty.
The Peace Conference closed its tempestuous existence with the
signing of the completed treaty June 28, 1919. The affair was bril-
liantly staged in the Hall of Mirrors, at Versailles, where in 1871 the
German Empire had been proclaimed. The treaty was ratified by
Great Britain, France, and Italy on January 10, 1920. It was never
ratified by the United States. A treaty with Austria-Hungary was
signed September 12, 1919, but it was not ratified by the United
States.
John Spencer Bassett, Expansion and Reform: 1889-1926 |Epochs of American
History, Vol. IV] (New York, Longmans, Green, 1926), 280-288 passim.
820 The Armistice and Peace [1921
193. Against the Versailles Treaty (1921)
BY SENATOR WILLIAM E. BORAH
For Borah, see No. 128 above.—Bibliography as in No. 192 above.
R. PRESIDENT, my aversion to the Versailles treaty, to the
principles upon which it is built, the old imperialistic policies
which have brought the world into sad ruin, makes it impossible for
me to ever vote for any treaty which gives even moral recognition
to that instrument. That alone would prevent me from voting for
this treaty.
I am not forgetful, I trust, of the times and circumstances under
which the Versailles treaty was written. They were extraordinary;
they were without precedent. All the suffering and passions of a
terrible war, led by the intolerant spirit of triumph, were present and
dominant. It was a dictated treaty, dictated by those who yet felt
the agony of conflict and whose fearful hours of sacrifice, now changed
to hours of victory, thought only in terms of punishment. It was too
much to expect anything else. We gain nothing, therefore; indeed,
we lose much by going back to criticize or assail the individuals who
had to do with its making; it was a treaty born of a fiendlike struggle
and also of the limitations of human nature. So let its making pass.
But three years have come and gone since the war, and we have
now had time to reflect and to contemplate the future. We have
escaped, I trust, to some extent the grip of the war passion and are
freer to think of the things which are to come rather than upon the
things which are past. We have had time not only to read this treaty
and think it over, but we have had an opportunity to see its effect
upon peace and civilization. We know what it is now, and if we
recognize it and strengthen it or help to maintain it, we shall not be
able to plead at the bar of history the extenuating circumstances
which its makers may justly plead. We see now not alone the punish-
ment it would visit upon the Central Powers, but we see the cruel
and destructive punishment it has visited and is to visit upon millions,
many of whom fought by our side in the war. We know it has re-
duced to subjection and delivered over to exploitation subiect and
friendly peoples; that it has given in exchange for promises of inde-
No. 193] Against the Versailles Treaty 821
pendence and freedom dependence and spoliation. But that is not
the worst. “If it were done when it is done,” we could turn our backs
upon the past and hope to find exculpation in doing better things in
the future. But we know this treaty has in it the seeds of many wars.
It hangs like a storm cloud upon the horizon. It is the incarnation
ef force. It recognizes neither mercy nor repentance, and discriminates
not at all between the guilty and the innocent, friend or foe. Its
one-time defenders now are frank to admit it. It will bring sorrow
to the world again. Its basic principle is cruel, unconscionable, and
remorseless imperialism. Its terms will awaken again the reckoning
power of retribution—the same power which brought to a full account-
ing those who cast lots over Poland and who tore Alsace-Lorraine
from her coveted allegiance. We know that Europe can not recover
so long as this treaty exists; that economic breakdown in Europe,
if not the world, awaits its execution; and that millions of men, women,
and children, those now living and those yet unborn, are to be shackled,
enslaved, and hungered if it remains the law of Europe. All this we
know, and knowing it we not only invite the lashings of retribution,
but we surrender every tenet of the American faith when we touch
the cruel and maledict thing.
When the treaty was written it had incorporated in it the so-called
League of Nations. I believe it correct to say the treaty proper was
only accepted by Mr. Wilson because the league was attached. I
have never believed, I have never supposed, he could have been in-
duced to accept this treaty, so at variance with every principle he had
advocated and all things for which he had stood, had he not believed
the league in time would ameliorate its terms and humanize its condi-
tions. In that, of course, I think he was greatly in error.
In my opinion the league, had it been effective at all, would have
been but the instrument to more effectually execute the sinister
mandates of the predominant instrument. Under the treaty the league
would have quickly grown into an autocracy based upon force, the
organized military force of the great powers of the world. But now,
so far as we are concerned, the league has been stricken from the
document. The sole badge of respectability, the sole hope of ameliora-
tion, so far as American advocates were concerned, now vanish. With
the league stricken out, who is there left in America, reared under the
principles of a free government, to defend the terms and conditions
822 The Armistice and Peace [1921
of this treaty? There it is, harsh, hideous, naked, dismembering
friendly peoples, making possible and justifying the exploitation
of vast populations, a check to progress and at war with every principle
which the founders interwove into the fabric of this Republic and
challenging every precept upon which the peace of the world may be
built. For such a treaty I loathe to see my country even pay the
respect of recognition, much less to take anything under its terms.
Some nation or people must lead in a different course from the course
announced by this treaty and its policies, or the human family is to
sink back into hopeless barbarism. Reflect upon the situation. We
see about us on every hand in the whole world around conditions
difficult to describe—a world convulsed by the agonies which the follies
and crimes of leaders have laid upon the people. Hate seems almost
a law of life and devastation a fixed habit of the race. Science has
become the prostitute of war, while the arts of statecraft are busy
with schemes for pillaging helpless and subject peoples. Trade is
suspended, industry is paralyzed, famine, ravenous and insatiable,
gathers millions into its skeleton clutches, while unemployment spreads
and discontent deepens. The malign shadows of barbarism are creep-
ing up and over the outskirts of civilization. And this condition is
due more to the policies which the political dictators of Europe have
imposed than any other one thing. Repression, reprisal, blockades,
disregard of solemn pledges, the scheming and grabbing for the na-
tural resources of helpless peoples, the arming of Poland, the fitting
out of expeditions into Russia, the fomenting of war between Greece
and Turkey, and, finally, the maintenance of an insurmountable
obstacle to rehabilitation in the Versailles treaty—how could Europe,
how can Europe, ever recover? Is there no nation to call a halt? Is
there no country to announce the gospel of tolerance and to denounce
the brutal creed of force and to offer to a dying world something be-
sides intrigue and armaments?
In this stupendous and bewildered crisis America must do her
part. No true American wants to see her shirk any part of her re-
sponsibility. There are no advocates of selfishness, none so fatuous
as to urge that we may be happy and prosperous while the rest of the
world is plunging on in misery and want. Call it providence, call it
fate, but we know that in the nexus of things there must be something
of a common sharing, all but universal and inexorable in the burdens
No. 193] Against the Versailles Treaty 823
which these great catastrophies place upon the human family. It is
not only written in the great book but it is written in the economic
laws of nature—‘‘ Bear ye one another’s burdens.” We do not differ
as to the duty of America, we differ only as to the manner in which
she shall discharge that duty. . . .
Mr. President, one of the revolting monstrosities born of this war,
the illegitimate offspring of secret diplomacy and violence, is the
absurd, iniquitous belief that you can only have peace through martial
means—that force, force, is the only power left on earth with which
to govern men. I denounce the hideous, diabolical idea, and I insist
that this Government ought to be counted against all plans, all treaties,
all programs, all policies, based upon this demoniacal belief. Let us
have an American policy. Or, if the word “American” be considered
by some as provincial or distasteful—a term of incivility-—then let
us have a humane policy, a Christian policy, a policy based upon
justice, resting upon reason, guided by conscience, and made domi-
nant by the mobilized moral forces of the world.
William E. Borah, Speech in the United States Senate, September 26, 1921.
CHAPTER XXXV — POLITICAL AND
SOCIAL MATTERS
194. Freedom of Speech in War Time (1919)
BY PROFESSOR ZECHARIAH CHAFEE, JR.
Chafee is distinguished as a legal practitioner, as a professor in the Harvard Law
School, and as one of the leaders of liberal thought in the United States. He ob-
jected to the adoption of what he considered un-American expedients in American
administration during the war, and was outspoken in his exposure of defects in the
judicial functioning of that time.—Bibliography as in Nos. 108 and 173 above.
EVER in the history of our country, since the Alien and Sedition
l Laws of 1798, has the meaning of free speech been the subject
of such sharp controversy as to-day. Over two hundred prosecutions
and other judicial proceedings during the war, involving speeches,
newspaper articles, pamphlets, and books, have been followed since
the armistice by a widespread legislative consideration of bills punish-
ing the advocacy of extreme radicalism. It is becoming increasingly
important to determine the true limits of freedom of expression, so
that speakers and writers may know how much they can lawfully
and wisely express. The United States Supreme Court has recently
handed down several decisions upon the Espionage Act, which put
us in a much better position than formerly to discuss the war-time
aspects of the general problem of liberty of speech, and this article
will approach the general problem from that side. . . .
Our main task, therefore, is to ascertain the nature and scope of the
policy which finds expression in the First Amendment to the United
States Constitution and the similar clauses of all the state constitu-
tions, and then to determine the place of that policy in the conduct
of war, and particularly the war with Germany. The free speech
controversy of the last two years has chiefly gathered about the Es-
pionage Act. This Act contains a variety of provisions on different
subjects, such as the protection of ships in harbors, spy activities,
824
No. 194] Freedom of Speech in War Time 825
unlawful military expeditions, etc., but the portion which concerns
us is the third section of Title I. As originally enacted on June 15,
1917, this section established three new offenses: 1. false statements
or reports interfering with military or naval operations or promoting
the success of our enemies; 2. causing or attempting to cause insubor-
dination, disloyalty, mutiny or refusal of duty in the military and naval
forces; 3. obstruction of enlistments and recruiting. . . . Attorney
General Gregory reports that, although this Act proved an effective
instrumentality against deliberate or organized disloyal propaganda,
it did not reach the individual, casual, or impulsive disloyal utter-
ances. Also some District Courts gave what he considered a narrow
construction of the word “obstruct” in clause 3, so that as he puts it,
“most of the teeth which we tried to put in were taken out.” On May
16, 1918, Congress amended the Espionage Act by what is sometimes
called the Sedition Act, adding nine more offenses to the original
three, as follows: 4. saying or doing anything with intent to obstruct
the sale of United States bonds, except by way of bona fide and not
disloyal advice; 5. uttering, printing, writing, or publishing any
disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language, or language in-
tended to cause contempt, scorn, contumely or disrepute as regards
the form of government of the United States; 6. or the Constitution;
7. or the flag; 8. or the uniform of the Army or Navy; 9. or any
language intended to incite resistance to the United States or pro-
mote the cause of its enemies; 10. urging any curtailment of the war
with intent to hinder its prosecution; 11. advocating, teaching,
defending, or suggesting the doing of any of these acts; and 12. words
or acts supporting or favoring the cause of any country at war with
us, or opposing the cause of the United States therein. Whoever
commits any one of these offenses in this or in any future war is liable
to a maximum penalty of $10,000 fine or twenty years’ imprisonment,
or both.
This statute has been enacted and vigorously enforced under a
constitution which provides: “Congress shall make no law...
abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”
Clearly, the problem of the limits of freedom of speech in war time
is no academic question. On the one side, thoughtful men and journals
are asking how scores of citizens can be imprisoned under this con-
stitution only for their disapproval of the war as irreligious, unwise, or
26 Political and Social Matters [r919
unjust. On the other hand, federal and state officials point to the great
activities of German agents in our midst and to the unprecedented
extension of the business of war over the whole nation, so that in the
familiar remark of Ludendorff, wars are no longer won by armies in
the field, but by the morale of the whole people. . .
At the outset, we can reject two extreme views in the controversy.
First, there is the view that the Bill of Rights is a peace-time docu-
ment and consequently freedom of speech may be ignored in war.
This view has been officially repudiated. At the opposite pole is the
belief of many agitators that the First Amendment renders uncon-
stitutional any Act of Congress without exception “abridging the
freedon of speech, or of the press,” that all speech is free, and only
action can be restrained and punished. This view is equally untenable.
The provisions of th2 Bill of Rights cannot be applied with absolute
literalness but are subject to exceptions. . . .
The true meaning of freedom of speech seems to be this. One of
the most important purposes of society and government is the dis-
covery and spread of truth on subjects of general concern. This is
possible only through absolutely unlimited discussion, for, as Bagehot
points out, once force is thrown into the argument, it becomes a matter
of chance whether it is thrown on the false side or the true, and truth
loses all its natural advantage in the contest. Nevertheless, there
are other purposes of government, such as order, the training of the
young, protection against external aggression. Unlimited discussion
sometimes interferes with these purposes, which must then be bal-
anced against freedom of speech, but freedom of speech ought to weigh
very heavily in the scale. The First Amendment gives binding force
to this principle of political wisdom.
Or to put the matter another way, it is useless to define free speech
by talk about rights. The agitator asserts his constitutional right
to speak, the government asserts its constitutional right to wage war.
The result is a deadlock. . . . In our problem, we must regard the
desires and needs of the individual human being who wants to speak
and those of the great group of human beings among whom he speaks.
That is, in technical language, there are individual interests and social
interests, which must be balanced against each other, if they conflict,
in order to determine which interest shall be sacrificed under the cir-
cumstances and which shall be protected and become the foundation
No. 194] Freedom of Speech in War Time 827
of a legal right. It must never be forgotten that the balancing cannot
be properly done unless all the interests involved are adequately
ascertained, and the great evil of all this talk about rights is that each
side is so busy denying the other’s claim to rights that it entirely over-
looks the human desires and needs behind that claim. .. .
The First Amendment protects two kinds of interests in free speech.
There is an individual interest, the need of many men to express their
opinions on matters vital to them if life is to be worth living, and a
social interest in the attainment of truth, so that the country may not
only adopt the wisest course of action but carry it out in the wisest
way. This social interest is especially important in war time. Even
after war has been declared there is bound to be a confused mixture
of good and bad arguments in its support, and a wide difference of
opinion as to its objects. Truth can be sifted out from falsehood only
if the government is vigorously and constantly cross-examined, so
that the fundamental issues of the struggle may be clearly defined,
and the war may not be diverted to improper ends, or conducted with
an undue sacrifice of life and liberty, or prolonged after its just pur-
poses are accomplished. Legal proceedings prove that an opponent
makes the best cross-examiner. Consequently, it is a disastrous
mistake to limit criticism to those who favor the war. Men bitterly
hostile to it may point out evils in its management like the secret
treaties, which its supporters have been too busy to unearth. The
history of the last five years shows how the objects of a war may change
completely during its progress, and it is well that those objects should
be steadily reformulated under the influence of open discussion not
only by those who demand a military victory but by pacifists who take
a different view of the national welfare. Further argument for the
existence of this social interest becomes unnecessary if we recall the
national value of the opposition in former wars.
The great trouble with most judicial construction of the Espionage
Act is that this social interest has been ignored and free speech has
been regarded as merely an individual interest, which must readily
give way like other personal desires the moment it interferes with the
social interest in national safety. . . . The failure of the courts in
the past to formulate any principle for drawing a boundary line around
the right of free speech has not only thrown the judges into the diffi-
cult questions of the Espionage Act without any well-considered
828 Political and Social Matters [1919
standard of criminality, but has allowed some of them to impose
standards of their own and fix the line at a point which makes all
opposition to this or any future war impossible. For example:
No man should be permitted, by deliberate act, or even unthinkingly, to do
that which will in any way detract from the efforts which the United States is put-
ting forth or serve to postpone for a single moment the early coming of the day
when the success of our arms shall be a fact. ...
There is no finer judicial statement of the right of free speech
than these words of Judge Hand:
Political agitation, by the passions it arouses or the conflictions it engenders,
may in fact stimulate men to the violation of law. Detestation of existing policies
is easily transformed into forcible resistance of the authority which puts them in
execution, and it would be folly to disregard the causal relation between the two.
Yet to assimilate agitation, legitimate as such, with direct incitements to violent
resistance, is to disregard the tolerance of all methods of political agitation which
in normal times is a safeguard of free government. The distinction is not a scholastic
subterfuge, but a hard-bought acquisition in the fight for freedom.
Look at the Espionage Act of 1917 with a post-armistice mind,
and it is clear that Judge Hand was right. There is not a word in it
to make criminal the expression of pacifist or pro-German opinions.
It punishes false statements and reports—necessarily limited to
statements of fact—but beyond that does not contain even a pro-
vision against the use of language. Clauses (2) and (3) punish suc-
cessful interference with military affairs and attempts to interfere,
which would probably include incitement. The tests of criminal
attempt and incitement are well settled. The first requirement is
the intention to bring about the overt criminal act. But the law
does not punish bad intention alone, or even everything done with a
bad intention. A statute against murder will not be construed to
apply to discharging a gun with the intention to kill a man forty
miles away... . Attempts and incitement to be punishable must
come dangerously near success. A speaker is guilty of solicitation
or incitement to a crime only if he would have been indictable for
the crime itself, had it been committed, either as accessory or prin-
cipal. . . . Consequently, no one should have been held under
clauses (2) and (3) of the Espionage Act of 1917 who did not satisfy
these tests of criminal attempt and incitement. As Justice Holmes
said in Commonwealth v. Peaslee, “It is a question of degree.”
We can suppose a series of opinions, ranging from “This is an un-
No. 194] Freedom of Speech in War Time 829
wise war” up to “You ought to refuse to go, no matter what they
do to you,” or an audience varying from an old women’s home
to a group of drafted men just starting for a training-camp. Some-
where in such a range of circumstances is the point where direct
causation begins and speech becomes punishable as incitement under
the ordinary policy of free speech, which Judge Hand applied.
Congress could push the test of criminality back beyond this point,
although eventually it would reach the extreme limit fixed by the
First Amendment, beyond which words cannot be restricted for their
remote tendency to hinder the war. In other words, the ordinary
tests punish agitation just before it begins to boil over; Congress
could change those tests and punish it when it gets really hot, but
it is unconstitutional to interfere when it is merely warm. And there
is not a word in the 1917 Espionage Act to show that Congress did
change the ordinary tests or make any speech criminal except false
statements and incitement to overt acts. Every word used, “cause,”
“attempt,” “obstruct,” clearly involves proximate causation. Fi-
nally, this is a penal statute and ought to be construed strictly.
Attorney General Gregory’s charge that judges like Learned Hand
“took the teeth” out of the 1917 Act is absurd, for the teeth the
government wanted were never there until other judges in an excess
of patriotism put in false ones... .
The courts have treated opinions as statements of fact and then
condemned them as false because they differed from the President’s
speech or the resolution of Congress declaring war. They have made
it impossible for an opponent of the war to write an article or even
a letter in a newspaper of general circulation because it will be read
in some training camp where it might cause insubordination or in-
terfere with military success. He cannot address a large audience
because it is liable to include a few men in uniform; and some judges
have held him punishable if it contains men between eighteen and
forty-five; while Judge Van Valkenburgh, in United States v. Rose
Pastor Stokes, would not even require that, because what is said
to mothers, sisters, and sweethearts may lessen their enthusiasm for
the war, and “our armies in the field and our navies upon the seas
can operate and succeed only so far as they are supported and main-
tained by the folks at home.” .
Although we have not gone so far as Great Britain in disregarding
830 Political and Social Matters [1919
constitutional guarantees, we have gone much farther than in any
other war, even in the Civil War with the enemy at our gates. Un-
doubtedly some utterances had to be suppressed. We have passed
through a period of danger, and have reasonably supposed the dan-
ger to be greater than it actually was, but the prosecutions in Great
Britain during a similar period of peril in the French Revolution
have not since been regarded with pride. Action in proportion to
the emergency was justified, but we have censored and punished
speech which was very far from direct and dangerous interference
with the conduct of the war. The chief responsibility for this must
rest, not upon Congress which was content for a long period with the
moderate language of the Espionage Act of 1917, but upon the ofh-
cials of the Department of Justice and the Post-office, who turned
that statute into a drag-net for pacifists, and upon the judges who
upheld and approved this distortion of law. It may be questioned,
too, how much has actually been gained. Men have been imprisoned,
but their words have not ceased to spread. The poetry in The Masses
was excluded from the mails only to be given a far wider circulation
in two issues of the Federal Reporter. The mere publication of Mrs.
Stokes’ statement in the Kansas City Star, “I am for the people and
the Government is for the profiteers,’’ was considered so dangerous
to the morale of the training camps that she was sentenced to ten
years in prison, and yet it was repeated by every important news-
paper in the country during the trial. There is an unconscious irony
in all suppression.
Those who gave their lives for freedom would be the last to thank
us for throwing aside so lightly the great traditions of our race. Not
satisfied to have justice and almost all the people with our cause, we
insisted on an artificial unanimity of opinion behind the war. Keen
intellectual grasp of the President’s aim by the nation at large was
very difficult when the opponents of his realism ranged unchecked
while the men who urged greater idealism went to prison. In our
efforts to silence those who advocated peace without victory we pre-
vented at the very start that vigorous threshing out of fundamentals
which might to-day have saved us from a victory without peace.
Zechariah Chafee, Jr., in Harvard Law Review, June, 1919 (Cambridge, Harvard
Law Review Association), 932-973 passim. Published also by Harcourt, Brace &
Co., New York. Reprinted by permission.
No. 195] President Harding 831
195. President Harding (1923)
BY JUDSON C. WELLIVER
For Welliver, see No. 157 above. Harding became President in 1921 and died
in 1923 (see No. 196 below). He was a genial man of moderate abilities. In the
Harding administration occurred the misuse of government oil reserves, on which
see No. 197 below. He was responsible for the Washington Conference of 1922, for
which see No. 207 below.
R. HARDING came to the Presidency convinced that the
tendency to make a dictator of the President was bad. He did
not wish to adopt the rôle, and believed it could be avoided. He was
all for understanding and coöperation, and from his seat in the Senate
Chamber, after he was elected President but before inauguration, he
gave assurance of this attitude. McKinley’s methods were his ideal,
and he clung to them with a sort of despairing hopefulness even when
urged by many to use the “big stick” occasionally. It is one of the
ironies that among those who pressed him to “use the club” some of
the most earnest were members of his own party in Congress. He
never came to the point of frankly breaking away from his convictions
in this matter; but I know, from conversations with him in the later
months of his life, that he had come to realize that his amiability must
not be allowed to be mistaken for weakness. Many times, during the
period when he was preparing the addresses which were later delivered
on his western trip, he talked of the responsibility which he felt for
pressing the program outlined in them, and made plain that if the
public’s reaction to his proposals were favorable, as he was sure it
would be, he intended to use all the power of his office to crystallize
it into law.
Perhaps that qualification, “if the public’s reaction were favor-
able,” should be explained. President Harding was a good deal irked
at the manner in which public men, political critics, journalists and
editors, are wont inevitably to attach exaggerated importance to rather
casual observations of a President; to assume that a suggestion put
out with hope of inspiring helpful discussion, is intended as the pres-
entation of a policy. He positively dreaded the microscopic analysis
of every suggestive remark, as if a lot of tremendous implications
simply must be found in it. That is one of the difficulties every Presi-
832 Political and Social Matters |1923
dent faces. Roosevelt dealt with it by forming an Ananias Club;
Wilson, by secluding himself even from members of his cabinet and
attempting to do all his thinking in a vacuum; Harding grieved and
was endlessly annoyed over it. Once, when a caller had reported
some remark of the President in a way that gave it a significance
utterly unintended, he walked into his office fresh from the morning
newspaper reports of the incident, and an early visitor greeted him
with:
“ Good morning, Mr. President; a lovely day.”
“Tt does seem that way,” he retorted grimly; “but if I mention it
to anybody, he’s liable to go out and announce that I ordered the
Weather Bureau to put on this long dry spell, and try to arouse the
farmers against the administration.” On another occasion:
“Good day for a golf game, Mr. President,” suggested a friend.
“That’s your view, not mine,” he replied quizzically. “If I commit
myself to that sentiment, I’ll be accused of ordering golf weather when
we need rain.”
These whimsicalities were often indulged in, in connection with the
minor annoyances incident to his office. He loved golf, and knew that
he was criticized for playing it too much. In truth, he played it too
little, and felt keenly the vaudeville gibes about his afternoons at
golf or week-ends on the Mayflower. “I wish I had a little of the
genius for play,” he once remarked. “It was one of Roosevelt’s
great attractions. He could play tennis, shoot bears, or do a hundred
miles on horseback, and everybody was delighted; if I play golf it’s
a snobbish game. If I shot a bear it would be heartless slaughter, and
if I rode a hundred miles at a stretch the Society for Prevention of
Cruelty would want me impeached.” He never in his life hunted,
because of an intense distaste for killing any living thing. That
prejudice didn’t run far enough, however, to keep him from being a
keen fisherman. “I never saw a fish with any human emotions,” was
his explanation of this inconsistency. He loved children, and they
would always go to him. A dog he had petted was pretty sure to
want to follow him.
He couldn’t stand against the hard-luck stories that are always
coming to people in authority in Washington, about government
employees who are losing their places and being left stranded. Yet,
finding the government establishment enormously expanded as a re-
No. 195] President Harding 833
sult of war excesses, he was determined that it must be reduced
sharply, and steeled himself for the task. He announced at the start
that he was “going to be hard-boiled about this business” and that
under no circumstances would he issue any civil-service executive
orders; that is, orders of the President suspending the civil service
regulations in a particular case and allowing an applicant to be given a
post in the classified service without taking an examination and getting
the required rating. On one occasion I weakly listened to the story
of a woman in whose behalf I was asked to intercede with th Presi-
dent: widow; three small children; money counter at the treasury;
$1200 a year and absolutely no other resources; notified that she
would be dismissed on January 1 because the force must be reduced
half; had no civil service standing: no chance to be placed elsewhere
because reductions were everywhere in progress, unless an executive
order could be secured. . . .
He signed the order, handed it to me, and said: “What chance does
a President have, anyhow, when everybody’s against him! Don’t
you ever ask for another order of that sort. Good night.”
He walked to the door, opened it, turned, and concluded: ‘‘ You'll
really see that she gets it to-night? It’ll make a lot of difference in
her Christmas, you know.” .. .
He had less pride of preconceived opinion than any big man I have
known except Theodore Roosevelt. Either of them could be talked
out of a long-sustained conviction—if one had a good case—and when
won over, they both adopted the new view generously and without
any of the odd intellectual resentment that many men would display.
If he wanted the opinions of a number of people on anything, he com-
monly consulted them separately, and seldom let any one of them
know he was discussing the same matter with others. This, in my
observation, became more and more his method after he was Presi-
dent. It had the effect of making the administration much less an
affair of cabinet conference and determination, than most people
assume it to have been. Many of the most momentous decisions of
the administration were made without cabinet discussion. .
To some extent because of this method, the President committed
himself to too many losing causes. He was cautious in approach,
but when he had decided in his own mind on a given course, he was
apt to go ahead with it almost regardless of politics or expediency.
834 Political and Social Matters [1923
He grew greatly in self-confidence in the period of his presidency.
Also, from being at the outset looked upon as a politician of the
politicians, a perfectly frank machinist, he came to have an almost
intense distaste for the merely political considerations. A member of
the cabinet, having occasion to fill the post of assistant secretary,
went to him and said: “This is an important place. I can find for it a
man almost ideal from the standpoint of the department’s work and
public usefulness; but his appointment would bring little of political
advantage. Or, I can make a perfectly respectable, unobjectionable
appointment, and accomplish incidentally some real political advan-
tage. I want your judgment.”
The President did not even ask the names of the two men thus
described. “The longer I’m here,” he said, “the more I’m convinced
that political capital acquired in this way is pretty illusory. This
Government ought to be run by the best men we can get, for the best
interest of the people, and not for the political benefit of anybody
who happens to be on the inside. You go ahead and pick the man that
wili best serve the department and the public, and Pll appoint him.”
That declaration would not have come from the Harding of March,
1921. It was strictly characteristic of the Harding of 1923. He said
to the present writer many times in the last year, that he didn’t care
much about the politics, but was determined to give the best govern-
ment he could; and he meant it....
It was my privilege to live almost at the elbow of President Harding
from a few days after his nomination until after his death. I never
knew him to make a demagogic utterance. He had a frank disgust
for that sort of thing. When he was nominated one of the objections
raised to him by some men who had served with him in the Senate was
that he was not inured to hard and continuous work, and that as
President he was liable to fail at this point. In fact, he proved one
of the hardest working of Presidents, although the public was far from
a realization of it. He was particularly conscientious about his
obligations as the business head of a nation, and twice every week he
devoted at least an hour, frequently several hours, to conferences
with the Director of the Budget regarding the Government finances.
He was anxious to make a reduction of taxes possible as early as might
be, but he often said that there was only one way to discharge a debt,
and that was to pay off as much as possible whenever it could be done.
No. 195] President Harding 835
He insisted, therefore, that some part of the debt should be discharged
every year. From this he would not consider deviating, even when
some advisers urged the political advantage of it. Once when he had
been besought to consent to some reductions of taxation which ulti-
mately would have meant passing on a larger share of the burden to
posterity, he declared that, “posterity didn’t get the world into
this scrape. Our generation did, and we must pay as much cf it as
possible.”
The President was in his personal affairs an excellent business man,
as is attested by the fact that, starting with nothing, he made a fortune
approaching the million mark, and yet found time incidentally for a
political career of the first importance. He was loved best by those
who knew him best, and in 1920 the vote of Marion City and County
was certainly a real tribute to one who had been for thirty-five years
engaged in the publishing business. Although he had devoted his life
to the newspaper business, he was as President a well-nigh hopeless
failure in the art of publicity. His trouble was an innate modesty
about himself and his accomplishments. His political friends con-
stantly urged that if the Administration would only advertise its
accomplishments it would be recognized everywhere as one of the most
remarkable in our history, but President Harding always insisted that
khe record must stand for itself. Nevertheless, he was very proud
of having given the Government what he believed was a good business
administration, and the speech at Salt Lake City on June 26 was the
frankest bit of boasting of which I believe he was ever guilty.
In order to get accurate statistics concerning the cost of state,
county and city governments, for comparison with the cost of national
government in recent years, he almost turned the Census Bureau
inside out for the better part of two weeks. But he got the figures
he wanted, and with them made a presentation of the details of na-
tional business management, together with a plea for economy and
careful administration, such as I believe very few heads of state in all
the world could have put forward. It was the sound counsel of a
sound business man dealing with the business side of government.
Thirty-nine years ago a country doctor at Marion, Ohio, gave his
boy three hundred dollars. saved from a precarious practice, and sent
him out into the world. The other day that same country doctor, still
practising in Marion, sat in his modest cottage home, and the world
836 Political and Social Matters [1923
brought back his boy. There could be no truer eulogy of that boy’s
career than is pronounced in that verse from Micah on which it is
said his index finger fell when he laid his hand on the Book in taking
the oath at his inauguration:
“He has showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the
Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk
humbly with thy God?”
Judson C. Welliver, Harding, Man and President, in American Review of Reviews,
September, 1923 (New York), CLXVIII, 260-272 passim.
re ce
196. How Coolidge Got the News (1923)
BY LOUIS J. LANG
Vice President Coolidge took the official oath as President immediately on con-
firmation of the report of Harding’s death, August 2, 1923. Thus precedent was
established when the oath was administered by the new President’s father, as a
notary public—For Coolidge, see No. 32 above; also, William Allen White, Calvin
Coolidge; E. E. Whiting, President Coolidge.—Bibliography: Calvin Coolidge, Ad-
dress at Philadelphia, Pa., Sept. 5, 1924, Adequate Brevity; compiled by R. J.
Thompson; America’s Need for Education and Other Educational Addresses (1915);
Price of Freedom (1924); Thought the Master of Things (1921); Foundations of the
Republic; speeches and addresses (1926); Have Faith in Massachusetts (1919);
C. B. Slemp, ed., The Mind of the President: as Revealed by Himself in his own Words
(1926); E. E. Whiting, Calvin Coolidge, His Ideals of Citizenship as Revealed through
his Writings (1924); R. J. Thompson, Collation and Co-ordination of the Mental
Processes of and Reactions of Calvin Coolidge (1923).
IVE newspaper correspondents were the first to apprise Calvin
Coolidge that he was President of the United States. I was one
of them. We did it at one o’clock in the morning of August 3, 1923,
by the flare of an ancient kerosene lamp, in the primitive farmhouse
of his father, John C. Coolidge, atop the Green Mountains, in Plym-
outh, Vermont.
The circumstances, abounding in tragedy, pathos, and sweetness
too—the last contributed chiefly by Mrs. Coolidge—were these:
At 12:30 A. M. the telephone bell tinkled behind the desk of a tiny
hostelry at Ludlow, Vermont.
A yawning night clerk of eighteen years, clad only in trousers and
undershirt, answered the call. Three newspaper correspondents,
No. 196] How Coolidge Got the News 837
also yawning, in the lobby, were about to seek their couches. The
sleepy clerk shouted from the booth, “Is Mr. Roy Atkinson, of the
Boston ‘Post,’ here?”
Mr. Atkinson replied, “Here he is.”
“Boston wants you,” returned the tousled-headed lad, who held
the wire. Mr. Atkinson hurried to the phone. He was in the booth
barely a minute. Then he called to us, “Boys, President Harding is
dead!”
“Oh, we heard that report last night, and the night before. Who
says he is dead this time?” asked James A. Hagerty, veteran political
writer of the New York “Times,” and myself in duet.
“Secretary Christian has wired the news from San Francisco. It
is official,” answered Atkinson.
“Well,” we agreed, “it means we must awaken Mr. Coolidge and
tell him he is President. You know he has no telephone nor telegraph
wire ’way up there on Plymouth Notch,” I suggested.
The hamlet was asleep. The only available motor-car driver slept.
The sole telephone operator was asleep.
President Coolidge was presumably dreaming in the “shack” just
across the street from his birthplace, fifteen miles away, up a dark,
stony, serpentine mountain path.
How to get the news to him of President Harding’s death and give
the people of the United States and the world the first message from
the new President was our job.
One of us awakened the motor-man by telephone and directed him
to bring his fleetest car around. Another awakened the combination
station agent and telegraph operator. A third routed out of bed the
girl operator who had exclusive charge of the single telephone wire
to the region outside.
She was ordered to commandeer every wire she could appropriate
in New England and hold it open indefinitely.
The motor car, of the vintage of a quarter of a century agone,
rattled up to the hotel door. Then it occurred to Atkinson that two
of our comrades were in bed. We yanked them out in their pajamas.
They started to dress.
“Dress in the car—the President is dead! We are going to tell the
new President about it!” shouted Atkinson and Hagerty in the same
breath.
838 Political and Social Matters [1923
Our comrades grabbed trousers, coats, and shoes, dashed down the
stairs, and joined us in leaping into the car.
“Step on her till she busts!” yelled Atkinson to the chauffeur.
The aged boat wheezed, rocked, jerked, and lunged. We were off
up the mountain. That drive seemed all but eternal and interminable
in its length and anxiety. The car back-fired and shook, crunched
rocks, stalled. It careened about road elbows at forty miles an hour.
The dim searchlights scarcely punctured the Egyptian gloom. .
Painfully laboring up the last series of precipitous hills, we sud-
denly shot into an open space. Then we narrowly escaped climbing
a tree which we had seen the then Vice-President nursing early the
day before.
We caught a glimmer of light.
“That’s in the President’s combination dining and sitting room.
Father Coolidge always keeps an old kerosene lamp burning, because
he gets up before daylight to milk the cows,” said our ancient pilot.
We drew up at the porch of the Coolidge farmhouse. All jumped
out. Except for the dim flame just described, the house was an inky
blot. Atkinson and I crept on to the porch, on which we had sat with
the President-to-be and Mrs. Coolidge the previous morning. Atkin-
son fumbled for the bell. It could not be found.
“There ain’t no bell. Weare all honest here. Oh, they don’t tock up
at night any more than in the day. Walk right into the house,” said
our bus pilot in a loud whisper.
Atkinson pushed open the door into the mite of a room where the
Plymouth Rock lamp sputtered. The Coolidge collie pup barked.
“Who is there?” was the husky inquiry from the adjoining room.
Atkinson, who recognized the voice of Father Coolidge, answered:
“The newspaper men. President Harding is dead. We must see
your son at once.”
There was a swish of clothing inside the father’s bedroom. Then
appeared the aged father of the President. He wore a nightgown
tucked into a pair of overalls. His feet were bare. Rubbing his blink-
ing eyes, Father Coolidge said: “Just had a flash from somewhere
about it. Pll call Calvin and Grace.”
The Plymouth Nestor climbed the stairs to the bedchamber of his
son and daughter-in-law. He had hardly mounted the first step when,
with a pant and a roar, a motor car stopped outside the door. A
No. 196] How Coolidge Got the News 839
breathless, dust-begrimed man rushed into the dingy living-room.
“Where is President Coolidge? Tell him President Harding is dead.
I have a message from Secretary Christian. I am from the Ver-
mont Telephone Company. I must see the President at once! ” he
gasped.
We informed the telephone man that Father Coolidge had gone to
awaken his son and daughter, and would return soon.
Lights began to gleam through the narrow staircase, at the top of
which the President and the future mistress of the White House were
presumably dressing. There was a rustling of a skirt. There was
shuffling of shoes. Hours seemed to elapse. We correspondents
were wondering if the President ever would come downstairs; whether,
if he came, he would violate his reputation for taciturnity; whether,
if he did, we could ever reach a telephone or a telegraph station in
time to catch even an extra edition of our papers.
One-thirty A. M.!
A girlish, brown-haired figure, attired in a simple dotted Swiss
gown, came slowly down the rickety, squeaky stairs. Her face wore
a sweet but saddened expression. The woman seemed stunned. It
happened that the writer stood nearest to the bottom of the staircase
when Mrs. Coolidge—for it was she—walked into the room.
Addressing the writer, Mrs. Coolidge said: “It cannot be true!
There must be some awful mistake. Poor Mrs. Harding, I do feel so
sorry for her! She has been so hopeful, so brave, so loyal and devoted.”’
Admonished that the news was only too true, the President’s wife
added: ‘‘We are both shocked. We can hardly believe it. We had
been assured that President Harding was on the road to recovery.
We are simply astounded by the sudden tragedy.”
The telephone despatcher handed Mrs. Coolidge this mutilated
message, signed by George B. Christian, secretary to the dead Presi-
dent. It was dated San Francisco, August 2, 7:35 P. M.:
“The President died instantaneously and without warning, and
while conversing with members of his family, at 7:30 P. M. (11:30
P. M. New York daylight saving time). Death apparently was due
to some brain evolvement (this word, through an operator’s blunder,
read ‘environment,’) probably an apoplexy.
“During the day he had been free from discomfort and there was
every justification for anticipating a prompt recovery.”
840 Political and Social Matters [1923
By the sputtering little lamp Mrs. Coolidge read the message,
which had been addressed to the new President. She turned to the
writer and said: “That word ‘environment’ should read ‘evolvement.’
That means embolism. That means a clot of blood on the brain, the
same thing that is reported to have caused the death of former Presi-
dent Roosevelt. Isn’t it pitiful?”
“You have no telephone or telegraph service here. We shall gladly
wire your message to Mrs. Harding at San Francisco,” I suggested.
Mrs. Coolidge expressed her gratitude. She went over to the center
table, took up a bit of paper, got a pencil, and wrote:
“Mrs. Warren G. Harding, Palace Hotel, San Francisco, Cal.
“We offer you our deepest sympathy. May God bless and keep
you.” (signed) “Calvin and Grace Coolidge.”
The writer asked the privilege of then taking the message along.
Mrs. Coolidge replied: “‘ Please wait until the President has seen it.”
Just here there was a step on the stair. There came from the bottom
of the flight an apparition in black. A white face was silhouetted in
the flutter of flame from the single lamp. It was the face of the new
President. It was ashen in hue. This was intensified by a suit of
black, a black tie, and black shoes. The habit had been substituted
for a much rumpled gray suit the President had worn the morn-
ing before, when he sat upon the porch swing and exchanged with
the correspondents felicities that President Harding was out of
danger.
The new President strode silently, almost majestically, into the
room. He greeted each of us with a hand-shake. We each addressed
him as “Mr. President.”
The new President’s keen eyes searched ours as if for information.
There was a tense interval. It was broken by Mr. Atkinson, whom
the correspondents had selected as their spokesman.
Approaching the President, he said, in solemn dignity: ‘Mr. Cool-
idge, you are the President of the United States. We bring you the
sad news of the death of Warren G. Harding.”
The President’s face grew even more pale, were that possible. He
waited a full minute. Then he asked, “Is that absolutely authentic?”
“Absolutely,” replied Mr. Atkinson.
Mrs. Coolidge then handed the President the message from Secre-
tary Christian. As he leaned over the table and scrutinized the official
No. 196] How Coolidge Got the News 841
report, the President’s face grew even sadder. He stoically read and
re-read the message. Then he dropped it upon the table. Speech-
less, he stood for still another minute. Then he turned to Erwin C.
Geisser, acting secretary. With dignity and precision, he said: “Mr.
Geisser, will you please come with me into the other room?”
The President and Mr. Geisser started for the room on the left.
Father Coolidge had dug up another greasy, flickering lamp. He pre-
ceded the President with it. The three disappeared. The door was
closed.
Nearly 2 A. M.! Nota line from the President for the many millions
who awaited it.
Two-fifteen A. M.! The door opened. The President reappeared
with a few sheets of paper. He walked quietly over to Mrs. Coolidge
and handed them to her. “Grace,” said he, affectionately, ‘please
read this and tell me what you think of it.”
Mrs. Coolidge carefully examined the manuscript. She handed it
back to the President. She smiled and said, “I think that is fine,
Calvin.”
The President was about to turn toward the impatient correspond-
ents when Mrs. Coolidge said: “Wait a minute, dear. I want your
opinion of this message to Mrs. Harding.”
The President read it, handed it back, saying, “That is a very sweet
note, Grace.”
Mrs. Coolidge gave the message to the writer to wire.
Meantime the President, still silent to the correspondents, handed
them individually this, his first message to the American people:
“Reports have reached me that President Harding is gone. The
world has lost a great and good man. I mourn his loss. He was my
chief and my friend.
“Tt will be my purpose to carry out the policies which he has begun
for the service of the American people, and for meeting their respon-
sibilities wherever they may arise. For this purpose I shall seek the
coöperation of all those who have been associated with the President
during his term of office.
“Those who have given their efforts to assist him, I wish to remain
in office, that they may assist me. I have faith that God will direct
the destinies of our Nation.
“Tt is my intention to remain here until I can secure the correct
842 Political and Social Matters [1923
form of oath of office, which will be administered to me by my father,
who is a notary public, if that will meet with the necessary require-
ments. I expect to leave for Washington to-day.”
The correspondents glanced hastily through the document. The
unprecedented feature was the announcement that the President was
to take the oath of office from his father, a mere notary public. I
asked the President: “Has it not been invariably the custom that a
President should be sworn in by a Justice of the United States Supreme
Court?”
` The President replied: “Maybe. But it is good law, in my judg-
ment, that a President can be sworn in by anybody who has au-
thority to administer an oath, even if that body happens to be his
father.”
It is understood that prior to taking the oath the President re-
ceived an opinion from a very high judicial authority that he was
right. This judgment was afterward confirmed by Chief Justice
William H. Taft, of the United States Supreme Court.
With the understanding that we should return for the swearing in,
if we could, we parted with the new President. . . .
. .. We reached there too late. The oath had been taken.
Coolidge was actually President. He had been sworn in at exactly
3:37 A. M. daylight saving time, under additional dramatic circum-
stances
Clustered about the President were these witnesses: Representative
Porter H. Dale, of Vermont, who had just resigned to become a candi-
date for United States Senator; President L. L. Lane, of the Railway
Mail Association; Joseph H. Fountain, editor of the Springfield (Ver-
mont) “Reporter”; Edwin C. Geisser, the President’s assistant
secretary; Joseph McInierney, the President’s chauffeur; and Mrs.
Coolidge. These grouped themselves about the old table, on which
still burned the smoky kerosene lamp. The old family Bible was
alongside it. Father Coolidge took up his station on one side of the
table. The President with Mrs. Coolidge faced him.
Elder Coolidge asked his son to raise his right hand. The President
obeyed. Elder Coolidge then read the following oath, the form of
which had been phoned from Washington but a few minutes before:
“I, Calvin Coolidge, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute
the office of President of the United States, and I will to the best of my
No. 197] Issues of the Election of 1924 843
ability preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United
States.”
The President with deep emotion repeated each word of the oath
after his father. Then came a pause. Suddenly the President, his
hand still uplifted, exclaimed:
“So help me, God.”
The President paused again. Then he tenderly embraced and kissed
his wife. The proud father walked over and seized his son’s hand
with a crushing grip. The witnesses shook the President’s hand. Then
neighbors trooped in, and there was quite an affectionate exchange
of mingled grief and congratulations.
It was near daylight. The President said to his wife: “We are due
at Rutland at ọ A. M. Better hurry with your grip.” Mrs. Coolidge
disappeared, first to prepare a breakfast of corn-cakes and coffee, and
then to get ready for her first journey to Washington as the First
Lady in the Land.
Louis J. Lang, in Outlook, September 5, 1923 (New York), CXXXV, 22-25 passim.
——>—_———
197. Issues of the Election of 1924
BY PROFESSOR JOHN SPENCER BASSETT (1926)
For Bassett see No. 192 above.—Bibliogranhy: M. R. Ravage, Teapot Dome.
N the same year, 1924, alarming facts came to light in Washington,
seriously reflecting on the correct management of three of the
executive departments under President Harding. The occasion was
the lease of naval oil reserves in California to E. M. Doheny, and in
Wyoming, the Teapot Dome field, to H. F. Sinclair. By law these
reserves were under the control of the Secretary of the Navy, but
that official, Denby, had with the approval of President Harding
transferred the naval reserves to the Department of the Interior,
A. B. Fall, Secretary; and the Attorney-General, H. M. Daugherty,
had rendered a supporting opinion. Fall lost no time in leasing these
lands to Doheny and Sinclair on terms very advantageous to the
lessees. Rumor said that these actions were not square, and finally
844 Political and Social Matters [1924
the Senate Committee on Lands began an investigation in 1923.
Day after day astonishing revelations came out. Doheny testified
that he lent Fall $100,o00 in currency two days before the lease was
signed, and it was shown that Sinclair had lent him $25,000 about
the same time. Fall refused to testify before the committee alleging
it might incriminate him and resigned his office. He was indicted for
fraud and ordered to trial. Public opinion would not hear of the
Attorney-General, who would ordinarily have been the prosecutor,
taking charge of the case, and special counsel was appointed. The
case, with cases against Doheny and Sinclair, is still in the courts in
1926.
The action of Secretary Denby in transferring the reserves brought
suspicion against him and a loud clamor was raised for his dismissal.
President Coolidge stood by him stoutly on the ground that nothing
was proved against Denby. Then the Senate by resolution demanded
his dismissal, but Coolidge replied that the demand was beyond the
scope of Senatorial power and that he would not dismiss Denby to
satisfy unproved charges. But the pressure of public opinion con-
tinued strong and after several weeks of delay the President ac-
cepted Denby’s resignation.
The next man to fall was Attorney-General Daugherty. The
things that were brought to light showed that he was not the man
to prosecute violators of laws made to restrain “big business,” which
is specifically the duty of an Attorney-General. The Senate, with
only one dissenting vote, ordered a special committee to investigate
his Department. Daugherty refused to allow the books of the De-
partment to be examined by the committee, and on this ground the
President demanded his resignation. The testimony before this
committee was startling. Although much that was said was unproved
it was enough to show that the office had been run in a very lax man-
ner. Daugherty’s friends attacked the reputation of the chairman
of the investigating committee, Senator Wheeler, and he was in-
dicted for unlawfully accepting a retainer from oil men in Montana.
On later prosecution the charges collapsed completely, and when the
matter came before the Senate that body supported Wheeler by a
vote of 56 to 5. So far as the Harding administration was concerned
the net result of the investigations was that three members of the
cabinet were discredited and the country was convinced that one
No. 197] Issues of the Election of 1924 845
part of that cabinet had been constituted on a very unfortunate basis.
The confidence of the people in Hughes, Mellon, and Hoover was
unshaken.
When the oil scandal came before the public the Democrats were
disposed to make capital of it; but Doheny, who proved himself a
willing witness, took away that hope by testifying that William G.
McAdoo, then a prominent candidate for the coming Democratic
presidential nomination, had been retained after leaving the cabinet
to look after Doheny’s interests in Mexico and had received a large
fee. McAdoo replied that his services had nothing to do with oil in-
terests out of Mexico; but in the excited state of the public mind,
opinion, stimulated by his enemies, turned strongly against him. It
was also shown that Franklin K. Lane, another member of Wilson’s
cabinet, had been retained by oil men after leaving the cabinet.
The result was that the Democrats lost the political advantage they
expected to reap.
The election of 1924 proved to be a tame affair. Coolidge was
nominated by the Republicans without opposition, with General
Charles G. Dawes for Vice-President. In the Democratic conven-
tion a strong split occurred. The faction that had supported the
Wilson reforms of 1913-1914 and announced a progressive policy for
the future now appeared in support of McAdoo, Bryan acting with
it. The old Champ Clark following appeared with Governor Al.
Smith, of New York, at its head. The prohibition question played
an important part, but it was kept as much in the background as
possible. More evident was the religious question. Smith, a Catho-
lic, was made to stand out against McAdoo, who was said to have
the sympathy of the Ku Klux Klan. Many conservative Democrats
from the South stood out for favorite sons, and in many ways showed
their determination to defeat the nomination of McAdoo, who was
the leading candidate. They were able to prevent his success under
the two-thirds rule, with the result that after more than a week of
struggle John W. Davis was nominated, with Charles W. Bryan, of
Nebraska, for Vice-President. Davis was as conservative as Coolidge,
and in the end the voters of the country had to choose between two
men whose views were much the same on important questions, with
the result that they took the Republican conservative by a majority
of 382 against 136, with the 13 votes of Wisconsin for La Follette,
846 Political and Social Matters [1924
who had run as a Progressive. The popular vote was 15,748,356 for
Coolidge, 8,617,454 for Davis, and 4,686,681 for La Follette.
John Spencer Bassett, Expansion and Reform: 1889-1926 [Epochs of American
History, IV] (New York, Longmans, Green, 1926), 303-306.
198. The Ku-Kluxer (1924)
BY GERALD W. JOHNSON
Johnson is a newspaper writer; on the editorial staff of the Baltimore Sun since
1926. The Ku Klux Klan was originally organized in post-Civil War days in the
South. Civil power in some states was in the hands of irresponsible negroes and
carpet-baggers. The Klan was an extra-legal secret organization, which used whip-
ping and sometimes death as a means of “breaking up state governments founded
on negro suffrage. The modern Klan was a money-making organization, active
in various communities and provided with substantial credit and other means of pro-
motion. In this article the author satirizes a type of well-meaning but rather stupid
and provincial American who made the new Klan profitable to its proprietors.
THINK that my friend Chill Burton is an Exalted Cyclops, al-
though he may be only a Fury, or a lesser Titan, for my knowledge
of the nomenclature of the Ku Klux Klan is far from exact. At any
rate, he is an important personage among klansmen in our town, but
rather insignificant in the State organization. He may therefore be
classified as a klansman ranking slightly above the average, but not
tar enough above ‘to it be in any way identified with the Atlanta
potentates, who are a breed different altogether from the ordinary
members. So if one might determine what made Chill Burton a
member of this curious organization, I believe that the secret of its
rapid growth would be made plain, for an argument that would con-
vince him would unquestionably convince millions of other obscure
and worthy Americanos.
In the first place, the lurid imaginings of many writers on the Klan,
particularly in the North, may be dismissed at once. It was not the
prospect of participating in the celebration of some revolting Witches’
Sabbath that fetched Chill, for he isn’t that sort of a man. He is
fifty years old, a pillar of the church, an exemplary husband and the
father of six head of healthy children. He believes in the verbal in-
No. 198] The Ku-Kluxer 847
spiration and literal interpretation of the Scriptures, and accepts the
Athanasian Creed and the Democratic Platform with unquestioning
faith. You might entrust your purse or your daughter to Chill with
quite as much confidence as you might entrust either to the right
reverend ordinary of the diocese, or to the pastor of the First Baptist
Church. He will not take a drink, and he will pay his debts. In
brief, if Pope was right, Chill is one of the noblest works of God.
Chill goes through life surrounded by the machinations of occult
and Machiavellian intelligences. He walks briskly, planting his
square-toed shoes with decision. He is sturdy, the least bit stooped,
decently garbed in clothing of inconspicuous cut and neutral tint,
and his iron-gray hair is growing thin on the top of his head. Occa-
sionally his eyes light up with a pale blue flame, and his mouth tightens
into a grim slit; but otherwise he gives no outward indication of the
fact that his soul is tormented by tremendous and ghastly visions
and his mind appalled by the perils that threaten the very existence
of true religion and unpolluted Anglo-Saxon blood.
These visions and perils, and nothing base, were the considerations
that made of Chill what is colloquially known in North Carolina as a
“klucker.” He certainly does not thirst for the heart’s blood of Mary
Amanda Emmeline Seymour Pleasure Belle Caroline Kearns, who
presides in his kitchen. He is on perfectly friendly, if not intimate,
terms with J. Leroy Goldstein, the pawnbroker, and Chris Skalchunes,
who keeps the fruit stand, and he treats the Rev. Father Paul O’Keefe
with faultless, frosty courtesy. Chill would sincerely deplore the
lynching of any of these individuals; most emphatically would he re-
fuse to have anything to do with their molestation, even in as mild a
form as a cow-hiding, or a coat of tar and feathers. Yet from the
bottom of his soul he believes that the dominance of the Anglo-Saxon
is hourly imperilled by the Negro; that if the Nordic strain is polluted
by infusion of any other blood, American civilization will collapse and
disappear; that if the Protocols of Zion were fraudulent, then some-
thing worse exists still unrevealed; and that secret agents of the Pope,
infiltrating the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, strove treacher-
ously to convert America to Catholicism by introducing crosses,
snakes and pictures of His Holiness among the decorations on the
dollar bill of 1917. Therefore, when less scrupulous brother knights
of the Invisible Empire commit outrages under cover of darkness,
848 Political and Social Matters [1924
Chill’s attitude is that while lawlessness is always to be regretted,
it is better that a few individuals should suffer injustice than that
our civilization, our religion and our very race should be exposed to
the secret assaults of foes without scruples and of superhuman cunning.
Nor is his belief a proof of insanity any more than it is a proof of
insanity for his small son to believe that Cæsar overcame the Nervii.
The boy has no legal evidence that either Cæsar or the Nervii ever
existed in fact; the schoolmaster has simply taught him that the battle
occurred, and that settles it for him. Equally oracular authorities,
the pastor and the politician, had filled Chill with fear and distrust
of Negroes, foreigners, Jews and Catholics long before William Joseph
Simmons, of Atlanta, began to dream of a throne. The explanation
is absurdly simple. Devil-drubbing is always easier and safer if the
particular devil selected for chastisement is feeble, or far away. In
the South, where the Ku Klux Klan originated, foreigners, Jews and
Catholics are relatively few and far between, and Negroes are polit-
ically and socially impotent. Therefore every Southern demagogue,
sacred or profane, has for generations covered his significant silence
on industrial slavery, on race hatred, on baronial estates supported
by legalized peonage, and on election frauds by thundering denuncia-
tions of the carpet-bagger, St. Peter, Judas Iscariot and Lenine, none
of whom was then and there present or likely to demand embarrassing
explanation.
The Cause was furthered in the South by other circumstances.
It happens that the South actually was under Negro domination
once, and after half a century the memory of that experience still
keeps its racial sensibilities abnormally acute. A Northern observer
recently pointed out that the Negro is all that it has to worry about,
so it has made up for the lack of other major troubles by worrying
itself into a pathological condition about the race problem. Thus, in
view of the diligent tillage that had been going on for many decades,
it is no marvel that the Invisible Empire reaped a rich and instanta-
neous harvest in the Southern field.
Yet it is commonly reported that the banner Ku Klux State
is not Georgia, but Indiana. Itis evident, therefore, that the strongest
appeal of the Klan is not to prejudice against the Negro—an assump-
tion borne out by the significant fact that only in rare instances in the
South have men wearing the regalia of the Klan attacked a Negro.
No. 198] The Ku-Kluxer 849
Nor have the Catholics, Jews, and foreigners furnished the majority
of the victims, except at such times as they have offered themselves
as candidates and been politically massacred at the polls. The
whippings, the tar and feathers, and similar attentions have usually
been administered to known or suspected criminals or social outcasts.
To this sort of work the klucker of a grade slightly lower than that
of my friend Chill goes forth joyously, sublimely confident that he
thereby serves the larger cause of white, Gentile, Protestant suprem-
acy, just as the county chairman stuffs the precinct boxes with the
county ticket only, thoroughly convinced that he is thereby helping
God and the national committee to save the country.
The necromancy by which the guardian of the sacred fires of civiliza-
tion, race and religion is transformed into a whipper of prostitutes
and a lyncher of bootleggers is no mystery. It is no more than the
familiar psychological phenomenon of “taking it out on somebody.”
Chill is profoundly convinced that the Nordic Protestant is in im-
minent danger; what could be more natural, then, than for him to
regard with tolerance, if not with approval, the extra-legal chastise-
ment of any one who violates Nordic Protestant standards in partic-
ular? No doubt some Gray Eminence is the man higher up; but he is
not within reach, or even identified as yet... .
But who impressed Chill with the notion that his duty to obey the
law is less than his duty to defend racial, social and religious purity?
Who but those who set up the great American fetish of equality, not
merely before the law, but in every respect? Chill has been assured
from childhood that in the United States of America every man is a
king in his own right and so naturally he assumes royal prerogatives.
The energy of a monarch in cutting legal red-tape in the cause of
justice may very well be a virtue; but it is a virtue that cannot be
democratized without disaster. To have a rigid and exacting stand-
ard of manners and morals set by an aristocracy may be of great
benefit to a nation; but when the proletariat undertakes to confer
that benefit—well, we have the result before us in America.
The Ku Klux Klan was swept beyond the racial boundaries of the
Negro and flourishes now in the Middle West because it is a perfect
expression of the American idea that the voice of the people is the
voice of God. The belief that the average klansman is consciously
affected by an appeal to his baser self is altogether erroneous. In the
850 Political and Social Matters [1924
voice of the organizer he hears a clarion call to knightly and selfless
service. It strikes him as in no wise strange that he should be so
summoned; is he not, as an American citizen, of the nobility? Politics
has been democratized. Social usage has been democratized. Re-
ligion has been most astoundingly democratized. Why, then, not
democratize chivalry?
The klansman has already been made, in his own estimation, politi-
cally a monarch, socially a peer of the realm, spiritually a high priest.
Now the Ku Klux Klan calls him to step up and for the trifling con-
sideration of ten dollars he is made a Roland, a Lancelot, a knight-
errant vowed to the succor of the oppressed, the destruction of ogres
and magicians, the defense of the faith. Bursting with noble ideals
and lofty aspirations, he accepts the nomination. The trouble is that
this incantation doesn’t work, as none of the others has worked, ex-
cept in his imagination. King, aristocrat, high priest as he believes
himself to be, he is neither royal, noble, nor holy. So, under his white
robe and pointed hood he becomes not a Chevalier Bayard but a thug.
The shocked surprise of many prominent publicists and educators
in the presence of the phenomenon of the Klan is the crowning ab-
surdity of the farce. These men have spent years and gained
great renown making just this thing possible. They have stuffed
millions of youths, and filled miles of bookshelves with twaddle about
the glory of the masses. By dint of herculean labor they have at
length deprived the adjective “common ” of its legitimate connotation
when it is used to modify the noun “people.” To do them justice,
they seem to have produced an uncommon people, a people incapable
of perceiving any essential difference between St. George and a
butcher, a people unwilling to admit that spearing a dragon is a feat
requiring mental and spiritual qualities not necessarily possessed by
a pig-sticker.
Chill is no more to blame for his delusions than the Knight of the
Rueful Countenance was for his. The romances are to blame. Chill,
indeed, has an excuse that Quixote could not plead, for Chill’s ro-
mances were offered and accepted as sober narrations of fact, as
histories, as lectures, as sermons. They were offered by and accepted
from authorities whom Chill respected too much to question; and
whom it is not profitable in any case, and not safe in many cases, for
anyone else to question.
No. 198] The Ku-Kluxer 851
Thus they are not merely woven into the fabric of his thinking—
they are the very warp and woof thereof. . . . He has been taught
romance in the name of history to the end that, glorying in the proud
record of American arms, he might present an unfaltering front to
any foe when his every instinct commanded him to go away from
there. But instead of making a patriot of him, it has served merely
to convince him that as an American he is “a mighty tur’ble man,”
one born to command, and disobedience to whom partakes of the
nature of mutiny in the ranks.
To inculcate patriotism, to immunize against foreign radical ideas
and to strengthen the bulwarks of true religion are certainly promi-
nent among the aims of the current program of Americanization,
which is absorbing enormous quantities of money and time and the
energy of innumerable massive brains. I submit that the magical
rise of the Invisible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, is one
outstanding proof of the tremendous effect of that program. No
romance that apparently tended to strengthen respect for the flag
and the faith has been rejected by the Americanizers on the ground
that it was blatantly false. But outraged truth has an uncomfortable
habit of avenging itself. Spurious history, spurious ethnology, spuri-
ous religion have produced a spurious patriot, none the less existent
because unexpected and undesired. The fact that nobody foresaw
that Chill would blossom into a klansman does not alter the fact that
the klansman is one of the flowers of our democracy.
On the whole, I think that it would have been kinder to him and
safer for the country if America had told him no lies to begin with.
Gerald W. Johnson, in The American Mercury (New York, 1924), I, 207-211
passim. Reprinted by permission of the author.
852 Political and Social Matters [1920
199. The New Generation (1926)
BY MATHER A. ABBOTT
Abbott, a Nova Scotian, was a teacher of boys and a Professor of Latin at Yale,
before he became headmaster of the Lawrenceville School. His success as an edu-
cator and teacher of boys qualifies him to speak with authority on the supposed
radical tendencies of modern youth.—Bibliography: Ben B. Lindsey, The Revolt
of Modern Youth.
S I looked over my boys this morning, when we were celebrating
Armistice Day in chapel, I said to myself: “The war is an ever-
present evil with me. I suffered so much during my three years in
the navy—we all suffered so much—that we can never forget it.
But not one of these fellows knows anything about it. The oldest
boys were only ten years old when the Armistice was signed.” Then
I saw a picture. I saw a picture of myself at eighteen, and the world
as it was then, and a picture of this maelstrom of a world in which our
boys are now placed. Think of it, and remember your youth. In
the last eight years we have had:
1. Prohibition and all it entails.
. The ubiquitous automobile.
. The cheap theater, especially the movies, with its sex probiems.
. The absence of parental control.
. The ignoring of religion.
. The emancipation of womanhood, combined with the modern
dance.
There are just six things. Now, when we were eighteen, liquor
was hardly thought of. We knew there were certain boys that used to
drink and we did not often associate with them. As for carrying a
pocket flask, it was practically unknown. When we took a girl out
for a drive, we had to hire a one-horse rig and we were all properly
chaperoned and looked after. We had no cheap theaters and no
movies. Our parents were addressed as “sir” and “ma’am,” and
their word was absolute law. God was an ever-present power, whom
we held in deadly awe. Imagine our feelings if a lady, with a cigarette
in her mouth and drinking a cocktail, should have shown herself at
one of our dinner parties thirty years ago! ... And the modern
dance I saw first in 1902, when I went up the Nile, in certain Ethiopian
N
Aun A O
No. 199] The New Generation 853
villages where the tomtom was no louder than the present-day drum!
Into this maelstrom the modern youth has come, knowing nothing
else, and you and I and all the members of this parental generation
are absolutely responsible if youth is going to the devil. But it is
not!
I have been in the business of teaching boys for thirty years. I
have at present under my charge 540 boys collected from nearly every
State, and I have never known a more truthful, clean-living, honor-
able set of young men. They are different from the boys of my youth
as the sun is from the moon—full of nonsense, full of passion, head-
strong, mischief-loving, but five times as decent, as truthful, and as
manly. Let me describe them to you:
In the first place their leading characteristic is that they must prove
everything by trying it. They do not begin where we leave off, as
we want them to do; they must go through every experience them-
selves. They take nothing for granted. They want facts, not camou-
flage. They can see the false through a ten-inch board. They have
an almost devilish intuition—I say “devilish”? because I have been
caught so often! They will have nothing of what they call “bull”
on the part of an older person. I would rather talk to five thousand
people of your age than I would to my five hundred boys. I have to
be so abominably careful that I can prove every word I say!
Secondly, the absence of religious instruction in their youth. Un-
fortunately, the mothers are too busy to give the fireside and bedside
talks that they used to give the little fellows, and the fathers are too
busy in business even to tell them the truth about the sex problem.
Now you cannot prove the other world and you cannot prove God,
and the modern generation will not accept anything you cannot prove.
So, though “the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom,” the modern
generation is practically without it. Since the great fear which held
us is absent, these boys, having the spiritual longings that all boys
have, are restless. Unwilling to face the deep questions of life, they
try to seek happiness in the material, and most of this desire that we
hear so much of for a thrill, for breaking the law, and so on comes
from an unanswered longing within, which they think they are going
to satisfy with material things, only to find that the material things
cannot satisfy. So these lurid tales we hear are usually caused, not by
any evil in the boy or girl, but by the untrammeled pursuit of truth
854 Political and Social Matters [1926
which is so evident in all the young of our generation. They want to
realize everything and, of course, you and I, in our maturity, know
that very few things in this world can be realized. In this connection,
I wish to use a place near-by as an illustration. This town has suddenly
become notorious, but I believe there are 20,000 people in it who are
not notorious, who are living lives that are decent and straight and
true. But the news of a certain family in the town blackens every
paper every morning. So it is with these stories of the youth of today.
They are frightful stories, absolutely true, most likely, but I do not
believe that ro per cent of our youth could be thus characterized.
If we looked upon the notorious happening in that town as the rule,
where would America be going? But it is the great exception. So
with these lurid stories; they, too, are the great exceptions.
Now, lastly, the equalization of the sexes: When you and I were
boys, woman was on a pedestal; we worshipped her. There was
pursuit; there was mystery; there was worship. Did we worship
that which was true or that which was false? The worship has gone,
disappeared, and I am told that modesty, too, has gone. Perhaps it
has, but we are getting at facts; we are getting at companionship;
we are getting at the truth. The double standard has vanished. Of
course, there are terrific calamities, terrific failures, but out of them
there is going to come something remarkable.
To sum up, therefore, what do I find? First, a truth-lover. Second,
a word of honor that is never broken. Third, a reasonable being that
will not take a rule as final until it is approved. Fourth, and most
astonishing, on the whole, a clean-minded individual. And then—what
will always happen where God is not regarded as supreme, what
has happened throughout history where a nation has given up its
God—a restlessness that is always unaccountable, a dissatisfaction
pf mind which makes the youth probe into things we never thought
ot going into, which we took on faith. Also, many failures, many
disasters, as there always are in a great upheaval, where freedom
gets confounded with license. No, gentlemen, the youth of the present
generation, as far as I know, and I know five hundred of them very
intimately, are on the way to great discoveries, have made a step
toward happiness and a step toward self-government far ahead of
anything we had in our youth. They need very careful handling.
They need all the love and affection that a man can give them, and
No. 200] The Republican Landslide 855
they are going to bring this old world of ours one step nearer heaven
in the end.
Mather A. Abbott, Address before the Rotary Club of Trenton, New Jersey,
November 11, 1926.
200. The Republican Landslide of 1928
FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES
The New York Times is a morning paper. This summary is therefore taken
from the paper of the second morning after Herbert Hoover, with a long record
of scientific achievement, of war-time service as Food Administrator, and eight
years as Secretary of Commerce in the Cabinets of Harding and Coolidge, was
duly elected President over Alfred E. Smith, four times Governor of New York.
ITH the count of the ballots cast in Massachusetts in Tuesday’s
election completed last night that State’s eighteen electoral votes
were added to the meagre score credited to Governor Alfred E. Smith
of New York, Democratic candidate for President of the United
States, in the nation-wide contest in which he was overwhelmingly
defeated by Herbert Hoover of California, his Republican adversary.
Other belated returns from doubtful States were all in Mr. Hoover’s
favor. North Dakota, North Carolina and Texas increased his
triumphant total by thirty-seven. With these put in the Hoover
column and Massachusetts included in the Smith tally, the result of
the Presidential election expressed in electoral votes was as follows:
Hoover, 444.
Smith, 87.
Total record votes, 531.
Necessary to a Presidential choice, 266.
Hoover’s majority over Smith, 357.
How great will be the popular vote is a figure that cannot be deter-
mined accurately at this time, but based on returns received with
approximately 22,000 missing precincts throughout the United States,
it is estimated that as many as 20,000,000 may have voted for Mr.
Hoover and perhaps as many as 14,500,000 for Governor Smith. In
round ssumbers this makes a total popular vote that may exceed
856 Political and Social Matters [1928
35,000,000 with the inclusion of the ballots cast for Presidential
candidates of minor political parties.
Definite information that North Carolina and Texas had joined the
procession of States whose majority votes went to Mr. Hoover em-
phasized the widespread character of the defection in the Solid South,
consistently Democratic since reconstruction days. Florida and
Virginia had gone over to the Republican Presidential candidate on
the basis of returns received late Tuesday night and in the small
hours of Wednesday morning, leaving to Governor Smith’s tally
from that section only Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mis-
sissippi and South Carolina.
Only two other States were carried by Governor Smith. Their ad-
hesion to him presented a striking contrast to his Solid South showing
in that both are New England States, Rhode Island and Massachu-
setts. He carried the two New England States in the face of the
fact that his own State of New York gave its electoral vote to the
Republican candidate.
Governor Smith has carried Massachusetts by a majority as yet
undetermined, but which has passed the 21,000 mark in the count and
will go higher, but not materially so, as few precincts remain to be
returned. He ran ahead of Mr. Hoover in most of the large cities and
in the towns where plants are located.
The cities of Springfield and Worcester gave pluralities to Mr.
Hoover. An ironic incident in Governor Smith’s Massachusetts vic-
tory is that he carried Northampton, President Coolidge’s home city.
But whatever comfort the Massachusetts adherents of Governor
Smith’s candidacy may be able to obtain by his triumph in that State
was overshadowed among the Democracy generally by the emphatic
character of the defeat he received at the hands of the Republican
nominee for President.
The entire West, dissatisfied farm States and all, gave their suffrages
to Mr. Hoover in the face of predictions that he would lose them on
account of bis opposition to the scheme of agricultural relief embodied
in the McNary-Haugen bill.
With the exception of the two New England States which Governor
Smith carried, the States of the whole Atlantic seaboard from Maine
to South Carolina gave their electoral votes to Mr. Hoover. The
Rocky Mountain and Pacific Coast States rallied to his cause. So,
No. 200] The Republican Landslide 857
too, did the border States of Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee and
Kentucky, while Wisconsin, credited with being very wet in sentiment
and dominated politically by the Progressive element of the Republi-
can Party, most of whose leaders had endorsed Governor Smith’s
candidacy, also found its way into the Hoover camp.
With Hoover’s notable victory went along assurance of that party’s
control of both Houses of Congress. With some Senatorial and
Congressional contests still in doubt, the Republicans have a clear
lead in the Senate and the House which should afford promise of the
enactment of legislation sponsored by Mr. Hoover as President.
New York Times, November 8, 1928.
CHAPTER XXXVI— THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS
AND THE WORLD COURT
201. Wilson on the League of Nations (1919)
BY PRESIDENT WOODROW WILSON
For Wilson, see Nos. 129-132 above. To the President the League of Nations.
seemed the only possible form of assurance that future wars might be averted. He-
could not feel that it was enough for peace agreements to restore the status quo.
However, although his proposed League of Nations was carried out, a strong do--
mestic opposition blocked his hopes of ratification by the United States. See also
Nos. 53, 202 and 204.—Bibliography: Henry Cabot Lodge, The Senate and the League
of Nations; J. H. Dickinson, The United States and the League; Eustace Perry, Re-
sponsibilities of the League; J. K. Turner, Shall It Be Again; and publications of the
World Peace Foundation and the League of Nations.
R. CHAIRMAN:
I consider it a distinguished privilege to be permitted to open
the discussion in this conference on the League of Nations. We have
assembled for two purposes, to make the present settlements which
have been rendered necessary by this war, and also to secure the
peace of the world, not only by the present settlements but by the
arrangements we shall make at this conference for its maintenance.
The League of Nations seems to me to be necessary for both of these-
purposes. There are many complicated questions connected with
the present settlements which perhaps can not be successfully worked
out to an ultimate issue by the decisions we shall arrive at here. I
can easily conceive that many of these settlements will need subse-
quent reconsideration, that many of the decisions we make shall need
subsequent alteration in some degree; for, if I may judge by my own
study of some of these questions, they are not susceptible of confident
judgments at present.
It is, therefore, necessary that we should set up some machinery
by which the work of this conference should be rendered complete.
We have assembled here for the purpose of doing very much more
than making the present settlements. We are assembled under very
8:8
No. 201] Wilson on the League of Nations 859
peculiar conditions of world opinion. I may say without straining
the point that we are not representatives of Governments, but repre-
sentatives of peoples. It will not suffice to satisfy governmental
circles anywhere. It is necessary that we should satisfy the opinion
of mankind. The burdens of this war have fallen in an unusual
degree upon the whole population of the countries involved. I do
not need to draw for you the picture of how the burden has been
thrown back from the front upon the older men, upon the women,
upon the children, upon the homes of the civilized world, and how
the real strain of the war has come where the eye of government could
not reach, but where the heart of humanity beats. We are bidden
by these people to make a peace which will make them secure. We
are bidden by these people to see to it that this strain does not come
upon them again, and I venture to say that it has been possible for
them to bear this strain because they hoped that those who repre-
sented them could get together after this war and make such another
sacrifice unnecessary.
It is a solemn obligation on our part, therefore, to make permanent
arrangements that justice shall be rendered and peace maintained.
This is the central object of our meeting. Settlements may be tem-
porary, but the action of the nations in the interests of peace and
justice must be permanent. We can set up permanent decisions.
Therefore, it seems to me that we must take, so far as we can, a
picture of the world into our minds. Is it not a startling circum-
stance, for one thing, that the great discoveries of science, that the
quiet studies of men in laboratories, that the thoughtful develop-
ments which have taken place in quiet lecture rooms, have now been
turned to the destruction of civilization? The powers of destruction
have not so much multiplied as gained facility. The enemy whom
we have just overcome had at his seats of learning some of the prin-
cipal centers of scientific study and discovery, and he used them in
order to make destruction sudden and complete; and only the watch-
ful, continuous coöperation of men can see to it that science as well
as armed men is kept within the harness of civilization.
In a sense the United States is less interested in this subject than
the other nations here assembled. With her great territory and her
extensive sea borders, it is less likely that the United States should
suffer from the attack of enemies than that many of the other nations
860 League of Nations and World Court [1919
here should suffer; and the ardor of the United States—for it is a
very deep and genuine ardor—for the society of nations is not an
ardor springing out of fear or apprehension, but an ardor springing
out of the ideals which have come to consciousness in this war. In
coming into this war the United States never for a moment thought
that she was intervening in the politics of Europe or the politics of
Asia or the politics of any part of the world. Her thought was that
all the world had now become conscious that there was a single cause
which turned upon the issues of this war. That was the cause of
justice and of liberty for men of every kind and place. Therefore,
the United States should feel that its part in this war had been played
in vain if there ensued upon it merely a body of European settle-
ments. It would feel that it could not take part in guaranteeing
those European settlements unless that guaranty involved the con-
tinuous superintendence of the peace of the world by the associated
nations of the world.
Therefore, it seems to me that we must concert our best judgment
in order to make this League of Nations a vital thing—not merely a
formal thing, not an occasional thing, not a thing sometimes called
into life to meet an exigency, but always functioning in watchful
attendance upon the interests of the nations—and that its continuity
should be a vital continuity; that it should have functions that are
continuing functions and that do not permit an intermission of its
watchfulness and of its labour; that it should be the eye of the na-
tions to keep watch upon the common interest, an eye that does not
slumber, an eye that is everywhere watchful and attentive.
And if we do not make it vital, what shall we do? We shall dis-
appoint the expectations of the peoples. This is what their thought
centers upon. I have had the very delightful experience of visiting
several nations since I came to this side of the water, and every time
the voice of the body of the people reached me through any repre-
sentative, at the front of its plea stood the hope for the League of
Nations. Gentlemen, the select classes of mankind are no longer
the governors of mankind. The fortunes of mankind are now in the
hands of the plain people of the whole world. Satisfy them, and you
have justified their confidence not only but established peace. Fail
to satisfy them, and no arrangement that you can make will either
set up or steady the peace of the world.
No. 201] Wilson on the League of Nations 861
You can imagine, gentlemen, I dare say, the sentiments and the
purpose with which representatives of the United States support this
great project for a league of nations. We regard it as the keystone
of the whole program which expressed our purposes and ideals in this
war and which the associated nations have accepted as the basis of
the settlement. If we returned to the United States without having
made every effort in our power to realize this program, we should
return to meet the merited scorn of our fellow citizens. For they are
a body that constitutes a great democracy. They expect their leaders
to speak their thoughts and no private purpose of their own. They
expect their representatives to be their servants. We have no choice
but to obey their mandate. But it is with the greatest enthusiasm
and pleasure that we accept that mandate; and because this is the
keystone of the whole fabric, we have pledged our every purpose to it,
as we have to every item of the fabric. We would not dare abate
a single part of the program which constitutes our instruction. We
would not dare compromise upon any matter as the champion of this
thing—this peace of the world, this attitude of justice, this principle
that we are the masters of no people but are here to see that every
people in the world shall choose its own masters and govern its own
destinies, not as we wish but as it wishes. We are here to see, in short,
that the very foundations of this war are swept away. Those founda-
tions were the private choice of small coteries of civil rulers and mili-
tary staffs. Those foundations were the aggression of great powers
upon the small. Those foundations were the holding together of em-
pires of unwilling subjects by the duress of arms. Those foundations
were the power of small bodies of men to work their will upon mankind
and use them as pawns ina game. And nothing less than the emanci-
pation of the world from these things will accomplish peace. You can
see that the representatives of the United States are, therefore, never
put to the embarrassment of choosing a way of expediency, because
they have laid down for them the unalterable lines of principle. And,
thank God, those lines have been accepted as the lines of settlement
py ail the high-minded men who have had to do with the beginnings
of this great business.
I hope, Mr. Chairman, that when it is known, as I feel confident
it will be known, that we have adopted the principle of the League
of Nations and means to work out that principle in effective action,
862 League of Nations and World Court [r919
we shall by that single thing have lifted a great part of the load of
anxiety from the hearts of men everywhere. We stand in a peculiar
case. As I go about the streets here I see everywhere the American
uniform. Those men came into the war after we had uttered our
purposes. They came as crusaders, not merely to win a war, but to
win a cause; and I am responsible to them, for it fell to me to formu-
late the purposes for which I asked them to fight, and I, like them,
must be a crusader for these things, whatever it costs and whatever
it may be necessary to do, in honor, to accomplish the object for which
they fought. I have been glad to find from day to day that there is
no question of our standing alone in this matter, for there are cham-
pions of this cause upon every hand. I am merely avowing this in
order that you may understand why, perhaps, it fell to us, who are
disengaged from the politics of this great Continent and of the Orient,
to suggest that this was the keystone of the arch and why it occurred
to the generous mind of our president to call upon me to open this
debate. It is not because we alone represent this idea, but because it is
our privilege to associate ourselves with you in representing it.
I have only tried in what I have said to give you the fountains of
the enthusiasm which is within us for this thing, for those fountains
spring, it seems to me, from all the ancient wrongs and sympathies
of mankind, and the very pulse of the world seems to beat to the sur-
face in this enterprise.
Woodrow Wilson, Address at the Peace Conference, January 25, 1919.
202. Henry Cabot Lodge and the League of Nations (1919)
BY BISHOP WILLIAM LAWRENCE (1925)
The author was Episcopal Bishop of Massachusetts from 1893 to 1926, and was
an intimate friend of Henry Cabot Lodge. See also Nos. 201 and 204.
ABOT LODGE believed with all his heart in the American ideal,
which was that of Washington and which has obtained through-
out our history.
As an historian and statesman he distrusted any national or inter-
No. 202] Henry Cabot Lodge and the League 863
national action, however well intended, which leaped so far beyond
the traditions and development of each nation as to endanger its
permanence and create a disastrous reaction. He believed that
national and international action must be built up from the people,
their traditions and their intelligent assent, and not imposed from
above. The world is full of the wrecks of noble ideals, pressed into
action by leaders who had not the patience and faith to educate the
world toward them. Hence in his consideration of the Covenant
he met many critical problems; such as these:
No nation, not one of those whose representatives had assembled
in Paris to make and sign the Treaty of Peace, had been commis-
sioned by vote or by the intelligence or knowledge of the people as
to what the League of Nations really meant. It was to be a plan, let
down from above: plans let down from above are not safe or success-
ful in days of democracy.
The Covenant was to be written into the Treaty of Peace in such
a way as to become part of the warp and woof of the whole: and this
at the close of the greatest war of history, when passions and jealousies
were keen, when emotions were on the surface, when sharp reactions
of feelings were sure to come. To be sure, national lines were then
plastic, and the newly formed nationalities could be tied to a new
system for the preservation and enforcement of peace; but the risk
of a sudden casting into mould of those two great issues, both of them
new to history, was very great. Again, the history of sudden alliances
was ominous. Moreover, the prestige of the United States, its
wealth and power, were great temptations to some nations to enter
a plan which could not under that sentiment be impartially con-
sidered.
The Covenant as presented, by drawing us into practical alliance
with European and other nations, reversed ‘the American policy’
established by Washington, and appeared to negative or wipe out the
Monroe Doctrine—a policy so revolutionary as to demand before
acceptance the intelligent consideration and approval of the American
people.
Senator Lodge had had a part in the framing of scores of treaties,
and knew the value of patient thought, the passage of time for con-
sideration, and exact language. To clarify the terms of a treaty so
that both nations may be practically certain of a common under-
864 League of Nations and World Court [rore
standing of its language is worth months of study; for thereby fric-
tion and sometimes war are averted.
The Covenant was practically a treaty or a constitution between
forty or more of the nations of the world; and its bearing was not
simply upon trade or boundary lines, but upon the issues of inter-
national peace and war, the upholding or the punishment of a re-
calcitrant nation; hence the need of the utmost exactness of language.
This Covenant had been struck off in a few weeks, while the critical
issues of the Treaty of Peace were also under consideration; and
within a week of its publication, statesmen, lawyers, and citizens of
every interest were disputing as to the meaning of the most vital
sections.
What would happen if under stress of hostile feeling nations hot
for war were to depend upon the language of this Covenant? It
would be ‘a scrap of paper’ on the moment. As Mr. Taft, once
President and later Chief Justice, an earnest supporter of the ideal
of the League, said, ‘Undoubtedly the Covenant needs revision. It
is not symmetrically arranged: its meaning has to be dug out, and
the language is ponderous and in diplomatic patois.’ Its terms upon
immigration and the tariff were vague. . .
American policy and practice has always recognized the equality
of States. This Nation has always recognized the equality of nations.
Upon this principle the Pan-American Union stands. The League of
Nations, on the contrary, was and is the glorification of the Great
Powers. They made the League. The large States were to be per-
manently represented in the League: the little States had no rep-
resentation as of right, only by election. The League is an organiza-
tion in which it is possible for the Great Powers to control the action
of the small Powers: it is not an organization in which the small
Powers can control the Great Powers.
The ideal of the nations of the world pledging themselves under
certain conditions to insure the peace of the world has appealed to
all of us. In national and international relations, however, ideals
must meet practical tests. The rôle of an idealist is a noble one,
provided he stands true to his ideal. The President, to gain the object
of his ambition, became involved in unrighteous compromises, such
as the surrender of Shantung to Japan, in order to secure the estab-
lishment of the League; and, forsaking his ideal, or seeking to realize
No. 202] Henry Cabot Lodge and the League 865
it through unjust means, he gained the ill-will and even hatred of
peoples which had trusted him, and tended to injure the fair name
of the country, won through the sacrifice of her sons.
Important as were these and other considerations in the judgment
of Senator Lodge they all held a place secondary to that which, by
common popular consent and the understanding of the President and
Senate, was the heart of the Covenant, Article 10, which reads:
The members of the League undertake to respect and preserve as against ex-
ternal aggression the territorial integrity and existing political independence of
all members of the League. In case of any such aggression, or in case of any threat
or danger of such aggression, the Council shall advise upon the means by which
this obligation shall be fulfilled.
When I opened the newspaper upon the first publication of the
Covenant, I sat down and read it carefully. Coming to Article ro,
x read it again and again. Whatever its last clause might mean about
advising the members as to how they should fulfill their obligations,
the first clause was clear and final—‘the members of the League [the
United States if she ters] undertake to respect and preserve as
against external aggression the territorial integrity and existing po-
litical independence of all members of the League.’ I read it again;
and then I went to my desk and wrote:
M~- dear Cabot:
{ do not see how any true American can stand for Article 10 of the League of
Nations.
And I added that the country should know what the Covenant would
lead us into.
In answer he wrote:
My dear William,
Your kind note has given me the greatest pleasure. It is a comfort to me to
know that you feel just as you do about the League; that the first thing is to con-
sider it thoroughly; that we ought to know, in a matter of such vital importance,
just where we are going, and that the American people ought to understandit... .
The attempt of President Wilson to force it through without consultation with the
Senate, equally responsible with him in the making of treaties, is nothing more or
less than an attempt to destroy the Constitution.
Always affectionately yours,
H. C. Lodge.
We have not yet, however, struck the fundamental issue of the
debate, which was whether the United States would hold to or abandon
866 League of Nations and World Court [1919
its historic American Policy or enter into close and organic relations
with the nations of Europe and throughout the world.
By our independence we have made unique contributions to the
good-will and peace of the world. We have for instance contributed
a straightforward, open type of diplomat and diplomacy. The names
of Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, Commodore Perry, who was a mes-
senger of peace to Japan, Charles Francis Adams, John Hay, Elihu
Root, and others come to mind... .
When the President finally presented the Covenant to the Senate
for their advice and consent, Senator Lodge, if he had considered only
his own judgment, would have voted against it without question or
compromise. He always had, however, a keen sense of responsibility
for his broader duties. This Covenant was presented to him as a
Senator by the President of the United States, and he always felt it
his duty to accede to such a call at every point consistent with his
principles. He was also leader of the Republican side of the House,
and Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations: a unique
position, and on him to a good degree the peace and unity of the
country depended.
Hence, with a solemn sense of responsibility, and with all the force
of body, mind, and character, he gave himself to so meeting the
objections and opinions of Senator after Senator, adjusting words and
sentences, as to obtain a two-thirds vote for the reservation.
The pressure upon Senator Lodge from all parts of the country to
alter this or that phrase was tremendous. He was charged with in-
consistency, with breaking his word, and evading issues. . . .
In the Senate he had a body of strong and determined men to deal
with. Nevertheless, he had the names of the necessary two thirds,
Democrats and Republicans, who were ready to vote for the Covenant
with the reservations. There were weeks when the Treaty and Cove-
nant were before the Senate when enough Democrats were ready to
vote for the Covenant with reservations to have made up a two-thirds
vote; but the President had told them that he regarded the reserva-
tions as a ‘nullification of the Treaty.’ Whether this determination
was due to promises which he had unhesitatingly made in Paris, or to
his temperament or principles, no one may say.
Had the President simply kept silence and allowed those Demo-
cratic Senators, strong, conscientious, loyal Americans, to vote ac-
No. 203] World Courting 867
cording to their judgment, he would have had their consent and ap-
proval, and the United States might have been sitting to-day in the
League of Nations. Failure to enter the League was not due to the
Senate, nor to its leader, Senator Lodge.
William Lawrence, Henry Cabot Lodge (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1925), 173-186
passim. Reprinted by special permission of the publishers.
203. World Courting (1923)
BY PROFESSOR MANLEY O. HUDSON
Hudson, Professor of International Law in the Harvard Law School, has been
one of the ablest advocates of American participation in the World Court. Service
on the Legal Secretariat of the League of Nations has given him first-hand expe-
rience of the functioning of both instrumentalities.
HAT I want to present to you is this: Here is a court which
in the first two years of its existence has handed down nine
opinions. All nine of those opinions have been promptly accepted
and promptly acted upon by the parties in interest.
But there are still some of my friends who talk as if there were
before the world a question of establishing an International Court.
There is no such question today. Forty-seven nations have agreed
to the protocol of signature setting up tkis Court. Fifty-four nations
are today supporting it, out of their treasuries. It is a Court open to
any nation of the world, member of the League of Nations or not
member of the League of Nations, on terms of perfect equality. It
seems to me to satisfy the general requirements of a world tribunal.
Not only that, but it seems to me to represent a very logical de-
velopment and fulfillment of what we have been working for in Amer-
ica for the last generation. Our representatives at The Hague Con-
ference of 1899 and at The Hague Conference of 1907 were working
for the establishment of a tribunal exactly on this order. In fact,
the tribunal has recently been called by a distinguished English lawyer,
“A replica of the Supreme Court of the United States.”
Now, the Court being in existence, it being a World Court, forty-
868 League of Nations and Worid Court [1923
seven nations having got over the great controversy that prevented
us from establishing it before the war, does it not seem a very proper
thing for the President of the United States to suggest, as he did, on
February 24th last, that the United States should give its support
to the maintenance of this institution?
I had the pleasure of speaking here on the very day that the Presi-
dent’s proposal was published, the 24th day of last February. I think
I mentioned, without knowing the nature of his proposal, conditions
very similar to those which Mr. Hughes himself had suggested to
President Harding. When the President’s proposal was first made
there was general acclaim, so far as my contacts went; general acclaim
that this represented the fulfillment of an American idea, an American
ambition, an American aspiration. But somehow or other, as so fre-
quently happens in these cases, the atmosphere seems to have thinned
out very greatly since the twenty-fourth day of February. Opposition
which would then have been resented by many people has now come
to have a place in our newspapers which must surprise many of us
who recall the original enthusiasm for President Harding’s proposal.
I would like to take a few minutes to discuss with you the develop-
ment of that opposition during this period. We are now living over
again the comedy which we lived through in 1919 and 1920 with refer-
ence to the League of Nations.
We now hear senators say: ‘‘ We are in favor of a court, but not in
favor of the Court. Of course, we want an international tribunal;
the United States has stood for it for a generation; we ourselves have
been talking about it for a generation. But this is not the tribunal
that we want. So we are going to ask the forty-seven peoples who
are parties to the protocol under which this Court is maintained, to
abandon their effort altogether and set up something that will be very
much better and that will somehow satisfy the susceptibilities of the
American people.”
Now does anybody propose, does Senator Pepper propose, or does
Senator Lenroot propose, that their suggestions make this Court able
to perform its functions as an independent judicial tribunal more
efficiently? Not at all. And there is nothing in any of the suggestions
that are current today, that I can see, that would add in the slightest
to the ability of this Court to serve as an independent iudicial inter-
national tribunal.
No. 203{ World Courting 869
There was a suggestion going around last spring—one does not hear
it now—that because the Court had a jurisdiction to give advisory
opinions to the Council and Assembly of the League of Nations, it
was therefore, a tool, a sort of a private adviser of the League of Na-
tions. None of us lawyers who are familiar with the jurisdiction of
many American Supreme Courts to give advisory opinions have ever
entertained such a view. The Supreme Court of Massachusetts, for
instance, has had a jurisdiction of that sort since 1780. And yet it
was seriously contended by many people a few months ago that
because this Court could give advisory opinions it was not a judicial
tribunal.
What I lay before you is this: The record of the Court to date, the
attitude of the judges in the discharge of their functions in nine
different cases, the attitude of the foreign offices of the world in bring-
ing in this Court in negotiation stages of their efforts to reach the set-
tlement of difficult questions. I think these should leave no doubt in
our minds that the Court is the independent tribunal for which the
United States has been working for a generation.
My second proposition is that none of the proposals that have
been made, with the single exception of the proposal for the compulsory
jurisdiction, would in any way increase the possibility of this Court’s
serviceability in the future.
It seems to me that a great smoke-screen has been erected in front
of this Court during the past few months. The American people are
now being asked to line up on different sets of reservations with refer-
ence to the Court, precisely as they were asked to line up on different
sets of reservations with reference to the League of Nations. With
reference to the League of Nations, it was contended that we would
undertake certain obligations. With reference to the Court what
would we undertake if we carried out Mr. Hughes’ and President
Harding’s proposal? We would simply say: “The United States
wants to have a part in maintaining this institution. The United
States wants the world to know that our moral influence is behind
this Court, in the effort of the nations of the world to reach some
peaceful settlement of their international disputes.”
I think that the generation of which we are a part has a very special
opportunity, and I submit to you that that opportunity is about to be
thrown away by Senators who are professing to favor an international
870 League of Nations and World Court [1923
court without ever taking a practical step that would enable us to
support this Court.
Manley O. Hudson, Address before the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations,
December 29, 1923.
———
204. Turning Our Backs (1923)
BY EX-PRESIDENT WOODROW WILSON
For Wilson see Nos. 129-132 above. For his address to the Peace Conference
on the League of Nations, see No. 201 above.
HE anniversary of Armistice Day should stir us to great exalta-
tion of spirit because of the proud recollection that it was our
day, a day above those early days of that never-to-be-forgotten
November which lifted the world to the high levels of vision and
achievement upon which the great war for democracy and right was
fought and won; although the stimulating memories of that happy
cime of triumph are forever marred and embittered for us by the
shameful fact that when the victory was won—won, be it remembered,
chiefly by the indomitable spirit and ungrudging sacrifices of our
own incomparable soldiers—we turned our backs upon our associates
and refused to bear any responsible part in the administration of
peace, or the firm and permanent establishment of the results of the
war—won at so terrible a cost of life and treasure—and withdrew into
a sullen and selfish isolation which is deeply ignoble because manifestly
cowardly and dishonorable.
This must always be a source of deep mortification to us and we
shall inevitably be forced by the moral obligations of freedom and
honor to retrieve that fatal error and assume once more the rôle of
courage, self-respect and helpfulness which every true American must
wish to regard as our natural part in the affairs of the world.
That we should have thus done a great wrong to civilization at one
of the most critical turning points in the history of the world is the
more to be deplored because every anxious year that has followed has
made the exceeding need for such services as we might have rendered
more and more evident and more and more pressing, as demoraliz-
No. 204] Turning Our Backs 871
ing circumstances which we might have controlled have gone from
bad to worse.
And now, as if to furnish a sort of sinister climax, France and Italy
between them have made waste paper of the Treaty of Versailles
and the whole field of international relationship is in perilous confu-
sion.
The affairs of the world can be set straight only by the firmest
and most determined exhibition of the will to lead and make the right
prevail,
Happily, the present situation in the world of affairs affords us
the opportunity to retrieve the past and to render mankind the
inestimable service of proving that there is at least one great and
powerful nation which can turn away from programs of self-interest
and devote itself to practising and establishing the highest ideals
of disinterested service and the consistent maintenance of exalted
standards of conscience and of right.
The only way in which we can worthily give proof of our apprecia-
tion of the high significance of Armistice Day is by resolving to put
self-interest away and once more formulate and act upon the highest
ideals and purposes of international policy.
Thus, and only thus, can we return to the true traditions of America.
Woodrow Wilson, Radio Address, November 10, 1923.
CHAPTER XXXVII— THE PLACE OF THE
UNITED STATES IN THE WORLD
205. The Diplomatic Service (1920)
BY WILLIAM PHILLIPS
Phillips began as private secretary to Joseph H. Choate, Ambassador to Great
Britain, a career which has carried him far in the diplomatic service. Between 1914
and 1924 he was Assistant Secretary and Under Secretary of State. Later he was
appointed Ambassador to Belgium, and in 1927 became Minister to Canada. See
also No. 49 above, and, on the consular service, No. 46 above.—Bibliography: F.
Van Dyne, Our F oreign Service.
HE foreign service is centered in the Department of State.
It is one great machine operating for one purpose—that of
facilitating the intercourse of the United States with the rest of the
world. This machine is divided into two parts—the Diplomatic
Service and the Consular Service. Each part contributes its share
to the success of the whole. Neither service stands alone. Each is
dependent upon the other and must work in co-operation with the
other. The Diplomatic Service is accredited to foreign governments
and peoples and has as its principal function the cultivation of good
will. The Consular Service is accredited to cities and districts and
has as its principal functions the extension of American trade and the
protection of Americans residing abroad. Trade and good will go
hand in hand, for foreign trade rests upon good will between nations,
and without good will it cannot prosper.
The money that we lend abroad, the railroads we construct, the
bridges we build, the goods that we sell, raise questions with which
both branches of the foreign service must deal. Before equality of
treatment in commerce is secured to us, a treaty must be negotiated
and its provisions maintained. Our share of the world’s foreign
trade is subject to all the winds of international politics that blow.
Preferential agreements or the opening of a new trade route may
close a market to us. Labor conditions or crop failures across the
872
No. 205} The Diplomatic Service 873
seas may be disastrous to our business year or reveal new and un-
expected trade possibilities. Eternal vigilance on the part of the
foreign service is the price of our safety in foreign trade. .. .
The diplomatic representative is the embodiment of the Govern-
ment and people of the United States. He must command the con-
fidence of the Government and people to whom he is accredited,
which is not easy unless he has an intimate knowledge of his own
country and at the same time a real sympathy with the point-of-
view of other nations. Although he has numberless duties to perform,
the high purpose of his mission is to strengthen the foundation that
will insure for all times intellectual and commercial intercourse of
foreign countries with his own country.
The work of consuls is more tangible than that of diplomats. To
be successful, a consul must secure immediate results, and result-
getting is a factor that brings popularity to the successful performer.
The consular officer is in touch with the business men of the com-
munity in which he resides and can, therefore, advise American busi-
ness men of commercial opportunities which open to them. When he
returns from his work abroad, he comes personally in touch with
American business and is recognized by the business community
here as an important asset in the extension and development of
foreign commerce. Chambers of Commerce throughout the country
have naturally rallied to his support, and because of their interest
in his welfare the President and Congress have responded to the
needs of the Consular Service and have raised it from a feeble or-
ganization, wholly dependent upon the spoils system, to a national
institution of dignity and prominence. Young men from all over the
country are seeking to become consuls because they feel that the
country is behind the Consular Service and they are proud to offer
themselves for such an honorable career.
One branch of the Foreign Service—the consular—has come into
its own because of its immediate result-getting capacity. The other
branch—the diplomatic—without which consular activities cannot
function, has not come into its own probably because its results are
less tangible and therefore it has failed to arouse interest and support.
Let us see how young America regards the Diplomatic Service.
Recently there were about thirty vacancies among the secretaries
of embassies and legations and to fill these vacancies an examination
874 Place of the United States in the World [z920
was held as required by the regulations governing admission to the
service. The State Department made every effort to incite interest
in the forthcoming examinations, but, although numbers of inquiries
were received, only ten men appeared in Washington for the ex-
amination. Fortunately, simultaneously an examination was held
in Paris for Americans then in the Army which was a little more
successful. But the lesson is plain. Very few will consider for a
moment entering upon a career which has so doubtful a future and
which has little support or backing from Congress or from the coun-
try. It is even more to their credit that, in spite of all drawbacks,
there are in the service, now, men who have loyally served the Gov-
ernment for years without proper remuneration or much encourage-
ment. But the highest standard for the service can only be reached
if for every vacancy there is competition from among the best ele-
ments of young men in the country; and there can be nò competition
until the service is made more worth while to enter.
The salaries of the diplomatic officers are a farce. A young man
is expected to give up the brilliant opportunities offered him at home
for services in foreign capitals at a salary of $1500 per annum. If
he makes a success of his career and remains in the service for ten
or twelve years, he may expect, as the highest reward, a salary of
$3000 per annum. It is true that during the war Congress appro-
priated for the secretaries of embassy or legation a so-called post
allowance in order to make up to them the increased cost of living,
but this appropriation, when spread over the whole service, does not
nearly meet the increased cost of living in foreign countries, is of a
temporary nature and may terminate at any time.
And then there 1s not much assurance given that merit will be rec-
ognized by promotion from the rank of secretary to minister. I am
seeing constantly the look of discouragement upon the faces of men
who deserve the highest consideration from their country for their
efficient and loyal service. The discouragement of men of experience
pervades the lower ranks of the service and affects the whole system.
Granted that Congress increases the salaries of all the secretaries,
granted that the Government purchases its own embassies and lega-
tions, granted a hundred other needed reforms, there can be nothing
permanent, nothing really substantiai, nothing which will bring the
Diplomatic Service up to the highest standards, until the secretary
No. 205] The Diplomatic Service 875
is assured that, if he makes really good, if he becomes of genuine and
far-reaching usefulness to the Government, his field of usefulness
will be increased by his promotion to the rank of minister and even-
tually even to that of ambassador. In other words, merit must be
recognized in the Diplomatic Service just as it is now recognized in
the Consular Service, and until this is assured, all other reforms may
perhaps be waste of time. Do not understand me as recommending
that all ambassadors and ministers shall be appointed from the ranks
of the secretaries. That would be a grave mistake and would crush
that spirit of efficiency which, through competition from within and
without the service, we hope to obtain.
Much has been said and written in behalf of the Government own-
ing its embassies and legations instead of permitting each ambassador
or minister to rent his own dwelling. A rich man now rents a “palace”;
a poor man struggles to find an humble “lodging” within the Govern-
ment salary, and it is always puzzling to peoples of foreign lands just
why all-powerful America should be represented among them first
by a “palace,” and a year or two later by a “lodging.” Of course,
the answer is that the Government should require its representatives
to adopt a standard of living of suitable dignity and this can be ac-
complished only by requiring its representatives to occupy a govern-
mental residence and by making it possible for a poor man, through
an increased allowance, to live there as well as a rich man. The ab-
surdity of the present lack of system is shown by the allowances which
the French, the British and our other competitors in the markets of
the world furnish their own diplomatic representatives. In London
the French Republic owns a splendid mansion and the French Ambas-
sador receives a salary of $45,000 per annum. The United States has
no residence and pays only a nominal salary of $17,500.
I remember shortly after Joseph Choate arrived in London, as
American Ambassador, he was obliged to spend weeks of his precious
time in hunting for a house. This became a topic of comment and
amusement in the English press, and a famous caricature appeared
depicting Choate clinging to a lamp-post on a dark and dreary night.
A policeman approached and told him to move on home, to which
he replied: “Home! home! I have no home; I am the American Am-
bassador.”
In Berlin, both France and England own splendid government
876 Place of the United States in the World [1922
buildings and in addition pay their diplomatic representatives $33,938
and $48,932, respectively, while the United States, of course, owns
nothing and pays its usual nominal salary of $17,500. In Siam, the
Siamese Government took pity upon the United States and presented
it with a piece of land in the hopes that we would build thereon; but
no, we accepted the gift but trembled at the thought of spending any-
thing upon it, with the result that a large slice of the land has slipped
into the river. We have made a beginning, however, in the right
direction by owning diplomatic residences in two or three capitals—
but only the merest beginning. Year after year recommendations
have been made to Congress looking to improvements—to raising
salaries, to purchasing buildings, etc.—and some important reforms
have been accomplished, notably the Act of February 5, 1915, grading
secretaries and consuls just as officers in the Army and Navy are
graded, but it is admitted that without a public opinion in favor of
general improvements throughout the service, without the help of
American business, no administration can hope to accomplish any
great result.
William Phillips, Cleaning Our Diplomatic House, in Forum, February, 192v
(New York), LXIII, 166-172 passim.
206. American International Problems (1922)
BY PRESIDENT EMERITUS CHARLES W. ELIOT
_ This is a scholar’s view of the things that were vital to us in international affairs
n 1923. For Eliot, see No. 106 above; he is also the author of No. 141 above.
HEN the armistice was unexpectedly signed on November 11,
1918, the state of mind of the American soldiers in France
underwent a sudden change. They all wanted to get home at once,
and to resume their civil occupations; and many of them, but by no
means all, avowed that they never meant to do any more fighting
except in defense of their own country and people. Never again
would they encounter the sufferings and hardships of the soldier’s
life, or run the risk of being killed or disabled, for the sake of any other
No. 206] American International Problems 877
people or nation, or in any way contribute to the enforcement of any
treaties, or alliances which might hereafter be made for the benefit
of the Allies, of the nations which had been neutral during the war,
or of the new states which had been created or were to be created as
results of the war. No more sacrifice of American lives or American
savings should be made for the benefit of foreigners.
Shortly after the signing of the armistice, some political leaders at
Washington, made aware of this state of mind among the returning
soldiers, began to talk about the secure isolation of the United States
and the self-sufficiency of their resources, and to preach the dubious
doctrines expressed in the phrases “safety first” and “America first.”
These slogans are both capable of good uses; but these politicians used
them in their selfish and ignoble significations. When the probable
terms of the Treaty of Versailles became known, a formidable pro-
portion of the members of the Senate gave notice that they should
vote against the ratification of any treaty under which the American
people might assume an obligation to enforce the decisions of the
Assembly and Council of the League of Nations. Partisan politics
had something to do with this demonstration in the Senate against
the treaty and the League of Nations which was incorporated with it;
but there were members of the Senate who really believed that the
conduct of the American people towards their late comrades in arms
and towards the promotion of human welfare in general, political,
economic, or social, might properly be thereafter determined solely
by the commercial and financial interests of the American people,
and not by any philanthropic or humanitarian emotions or sympa-
thies. The platform of the Republican Party endorsed this demoraliz-
ing doctrine. This was an extraordinary departure from the moral
principles whica the whole experience of the American democracy had
inculcated, and the birth of the Republican Party had nobly illus-
trated.
In November, 1920, the Republican Party returned to power,
after an interval of eight years, with an overwhelming majority in
both the Senate and the House and complete possession of the ad-
ministrative organization. The new Administration believed that
it had received from the people an emphatic mandate to prevent
the United States from incurring any obligation to assist Europe,
on either the political or the economic side, to recover from the
878 Place of the United States in the World [1922
desolation and chaos which resulted from the war, and particularly
to keep the United States out of the League of Nations, because one
article in that covenant contemplated the possible use of some inter-
rational force to prevent outbreaks of war.
Accordingly, the United States have taken no direct official part
in any of the international efforts to rescue Europe from its present
deplorable condition, although they have sent unofficial observers,
or lookers-on, to some of the conferences or meetings on means of
rescue. The attitude of the American Government toward all these
efforts has been cold and unsympathetic, and as a matter of fact the
efforts of the other nations have been crippled by the abstention of
the United States. The League of Nations has been well organized,
and its membership having been much increased, it has done some
effective work toward the re-establishment of order in Europe and
the prevention of sporadic fighting; but it cannot accomplish the
objects for which it was created until the United States take active
part in its work. Why does the American Government maintain
this weak and ungenerous attitude? Because it believes that the
American people have turned their backs on their history, including
that of the five years from 1914 to 1919, and have decided that they
will fight no more and suffer no more for other peoples or in the gen-
eral cause of liberty, justice, and peace for mankind.
There is serious doubt whether any large part of the American
people has suffered this moral collapse .. .
In the two years which have elapsed since the last Presidential
election divisions have appeared within the Republican Party itself
on such important matters as the Bonus Bill, the Emergency Tariff
Bill, and the proper dealing by the government with the strikes
which now threaten the comfort and security of the public and the
business prosperity of the whole country. Clearly the American
public is beginning to desire that their government assume a vigorous
and generous attitude both at home and abroad, an attitude de-
termined not by cowardly selfishness or timid circumspection but by
brave disinterestedness. It is highly significant that hundreds of
college students and young graduates are at this moment attending
at their own charges camps for military instruction and training in
which the teachers are men who saw service in the late war. These
youths propose to be ready to serve effectively when next their coun-
No. 206] American International Problems 879
try summons them to fight; they do not like the present attitude of
the American Government towards suffering humanity, and hope
and expect that the American people will shortly return at whatever
risk to their traditional policies in favor of arbitration in international
disputes, the development of International Law, the maintenance of
an International Court with the usual sanctions for its decisions, and
the abolition of war for expansion or conquest. These young men
constitute an important element in the new voters. The ex-soldiers
who rashly say that they will fight no more have no influence with
them.
In the hope of making some contribution to the settlement of
Europe and the prevention of war, while still keeping America out
of European alliances and treaties, the American Government called
and led the Washington Conference. In both the original and the
revised Agenda prepared by the Department of State reduction of
land forces appeared as one of the prime subjects for consideration
at the Conference; but when France declared that she could not
reduce her army effectively unless she were promised aid by Great
Britain and the United States in case she were attacked, the reduc-
tion of land forces was dropped incontinently by common consent.
The United States would give no such promise. . . .
At the Washington Conference the American Secretary of State
carried by great audacity and firmness a serious reduction in the cost.
of the navies of the leading naval powers; but the reduced navies are
to be kept in prime fighting order with all the latest improvements.
in submarine and aérial activity. This is a gain for the budgets of
the few naval powers which is well worth while, but has little effect
on the bankrupt condition of the majority of the European powers,
and slight if any effect toward the abolition of war. The pacts made
at Washington with regard to Pacific Ocean affairs and Far Eastern
powers contained no provision for the enforcement of the agreements.
If any nation violates or disregards them, the remedy is only more
conference. At the Washington Conference the United States did not
undertake to use its army or navy, or any part thereof, to enforce on
land or sea the agreements into which they entered. The American
people seem still to hold the position that they will make no more
sacrifices for the promotion in the world of justice, liberty, and peace.
How can any lover of his country believe that the American spirit
880 Place of the United States in the World [1922
has really sunk so far? How can anyone fail to see that no progress
can be made toward the abolition of war until America becomes a
full partner in the holy enterprise, and takes all its risks? . . .
One excuse can be offered for the present reluctance of the American
people to take their full share in international action. They have
always objected to national action in general, not excepting national
action in favor of education and the public health. . . . Some recent
events have opened the mind of the people to the indispensableness
of national action against evils which take effect, or are liable to take
effect, all over the country. . . . It was not until prohibition was
ordered by a national enactment that a reduction of the monstrous
evil of alcoholism became possible and its ultimate extermination
probable. The separate states could not deal intelligently with the
engineering problem of irrigation from streams that flowed through
several states, or along their borders. The immigration problem
could not be dealt with in any satisfactory way until the national
government took control of it. The Weather Bureau must be sup-
ported by the national government. The late war taught emphatically
that the state militias must be converted into National Guards, and
in wartime brought under the control and direction of the national
military authorities. These vivid lessons have taught many Ameri-
cans that the historical objection to national action requires modifi-
cation to meet the new conditions of the Federal Union. . . .
What then should American patriots advocate and hope for in
respect to American participation in international action to restore
stable government to the countries of Europe, old or new, repair the
losses in population, public health, means of transportation, and
agricultural and manufacturing productiveness, and to efface as fast
as possible the distrusts and hatreds which the war engendered? Our
government should enter heartily into the existing League of Nations,
take a sympathetic share in every discussion broached in the League,
and be ready to take more than its share in all the responsibilities
which unanimous action of the nations constituting the League might
impose. America should cease to keep out of the Paris Covenant,
“the greatest step in recorded history in the betterment of inter-
national relations,” as ex-President Taft said of it in March, roro,
and give over completely every fear of being called upon to fight, no
matter where, in support of the decisions of the League. That fear
No. 207] The Washington Conference 881
is now and always has been absolutely unworthy of the American
people, false to its history, and even falser to its hopes.
The next American contribution to civilization should be full
participation in the safe conduct of those world affairs through which
the enlightened common interests of mankind are served, first, by
joining heartily the League of Nations for the immediate salvation
of Europe and the Near East, and then by advocating steadily for
all the world Federalism, elastic and progressive Law, codperative
management and discipline in machinery industries, the emancipation
of children from fear, harsh domination, and premature labor, the
furtherance of preventive medicine and public health, and the opening
for everybody of the delightful and sustaining vision of freedom,
aspiration, and hope.
Charles W. Eliot, in Foreign Affairs (New York, 1923), I, 59-65 passim. Re-
printed by permission.
207. The Washington Conference (1922)
BY MARK SULLIVAN
Sullivan is a widely known journalist, and author of Our Times, a history of the
United States since 1900. The Washington Conference marked rather larger sacrifices
by the United States than by any of the other nations participating, and was really
ineffectual in curtailing naval expenditures because there were so many types of
ships which it did not affect. For Harding see No. 195 above.—Bibliography: Mark
Sullivar, The Great Adventure at Washington.
SUSPECT that in Harding’s mind, as in my own, and in the minds
of nearly all the delegates and others in Washington at that time,
the two events coming on two succeeding days were merged and seen
as one—the burial of the unknown soldier, who symbolized our grief
over the sacrifices of the war just passed; and the opening of the Con-
ference, which symbolized our hope of making other such sacrifices
unnecessary. Certain it is that the most earnest and moving part of
this speech of Harding’s at the Conference opening was the passage
in which he spoke the emotions that had come to him the day before:
882 Place of the United States in the World [1922
Here in the United States we are but freshly turned from the burial of an unknown
American soldier, when a nation sorrowed while paying him tribute. Whether it
was spoken or not, a hundred millions of our people were summarizing the inex-
cusable causes, the incalculable cost, the unspeakable sacrifices, and the unutterable
sorrows, and there was the ever-impelling question: How can humanity justify or
God forgive? Human hate demands no such toll; ambition and greed must be
denied it. If misunderstanding must take the blame, then let us banish it.
But if this was the most moving part of the speech, the most ex-
pressive of that brooding melancholy which still hung over us from
the day before, it was a different passage that brought out the most
sharply prompt applause, the most deeply ringing approval. That
came when Harding spoke in the spirit of stern demand, when he com-
pressed into a single, compact sentence his own and America’s deter-
mination to bring about the end for which the Conference had been
called. Harding’s manner, as he raised his eyes from his manuscript
and leaned out toward the delegates, took on the same stern quality
as his words. There was a completely restrained but nevertheless
easily recognizable hint of challenge to any who might oppose—the ex-
pression of one with whom it is a rule of life to be placable and gentle,
but who, on this occasion, has the unyielding determination of a
deeply moved man, a glint of stubborn strength, in a purpose patiently
arrived at.
“I can speak officially,” he said, “only for the United States. Our
hundred millions frankly want less of armament and none of war.”
The approval of the audience for this sentiment, which was no less
a sentiment than a challenge, was immediate and prolonged. (Inci-
dentally, it was interesting to observe that it was William Jennings
Bryan who most quickly caught the import of Harding’s words and
manner. For the moment, Harding was a fighting man trumpeting
out a cause; and it was as one fighting man to another that Bryan
dropped his pencil and paper, leaped to his feet, and leaning far out
toward the speaker, led the applause with all the fire and fervor of
one of his most evangelically inspired moments.) When the applause
died down, Harding concluded his address with a less stern note, an
appealing call for coöperation in “a service to mankind, . . . a
better order which will tranquillize the world.”
As Harding ended his address, he again took on his habitual manner
of self-effacing modesty. He tried to satisfy the clamoring audience
with a smile of appreciation and gratitude as he began to move away
No. 207] The Washington Conference 883
toward the door. But Hughes grasped his hand and shook it glow-
ingly. That caused the applause to rise again. Harding, still smil-
ing and bowing bashfully, kept trying to edge toward the door. But
Balfour also grasped his hand, and then Briand and Viviani and all
the others who could reach him as he made his way toward the door
with as much speed as he could manage without seeming to lack cour-
tesy to the applauding audience and to the various delegates who
were trying to reach his hand. Finally, he succeeded in edging his
way beneath the gallery, and with a last diffident wave of his arm to
the audience, stepped rapidly through the door. . . .
The French delegates were highly self-conscious about the proud
place their nation had held for six centuries of history, a little un-
comfortably aware that that place has become somewhat less elevated,
relative to new nations like America and Japan, and acutely sensitive
to anything that might seem to diminish France’s dignity and ancient
prerogatives. One of these prerogatives is the fact that French has
long been the official language of diplomacy. In the present confer-
ence it would be absurd to so regard it. The Conference was on the
soil of an English-speaking country, and the English-speaking peoples
participating in it were almost a hundred and seventy millions to
France’s forty. Nevertheless, France, in this respect as in all others,
was at every moment watchfully punctilious about her dignity... .
It was in this friendly, warming atmosphere that Hughes began his
speech. In the setting he gave to his performance as a whole, Hughes,
as all the world now knows, showed a superb sense of the dramatic
quality of the relation to the world that he and his country and his
purpose had that day... .
Then for a moment there came into Hughes’ voice the same stern
note of imperious demand that had marked a part of Harding’s speech.
“The world looks to this conference,” he said, “to relieve humanity
of the crushing burden created by competition in armament, and it is
the view of the American Government that we should meet that
expectation without any unnecessary delay.” At that the audience
applauded. That was the kind of talk the crowd wanted. It was
American talk, and it sounded like action... .
That again was action-talk. Better yet, by this time, Hughes
was through with lawyer generalities, and had become thoroughly a
fighting man giving voice to a cail for instant action. Sentence
884 Place of the United States in the World [1922
followed sentence charged with the note of insistent demand. “We
can no longer content ourselves with investigations, with statistics,
with reports, and with the circumlocution of inquiry. The time has
come and this conference has been called not for general resolutions
or mutual advice, but for action.” ...
I am happy to say that I am at liberty to go beyond these general propositions
and, on behalf of the American delegation, acting under the instructions of the
President of the United States, to submit to you a concrete proposition for an
agreement for the limitation of naval armament.
Now Hughes went on with the details of what he called America’s
“concrete proposition’—the very phrase carried crisp and homely
implications of something direct and business-like. He read first
the four big principles:
(1) That all capital-ship building programmes, either actual or projected, should
be abandoned;
(2) That further reduction should be made through the scrapping of certain of
the older ships;
(3) That, in general, regard should be had to the existing naval strength of the
Powers concerned;
(4) That the capital-ship tonnage should be used as the measurement of strength
for navies and a proportionate allowance of auxiliary combatant craft prescribed.
From this, without a pause, Hughes went straight to figures of
tonnage and names of ships. He introduced it with the shortest
possible sentence, “The United States proposes, if this plan is ac-
cepted,” and then enumerated:
(1) To scrap all capital ships now under construction. This includes six battle
cruisers and seven battleships now on the ways and in course of building, and two
battleships launched.
The total number of new capital ships thus to be scrapped is fifteen. The total
tonnage of the new capital ships when completed would be 618,000 tons.
(2) To scrap all the older battleships up to, but not including, the Delaware and
North Dakota. The total number of these old battleships to be scrapped is fifteen.
Their total tonnage is 227,740 tons.
Thus the number of capital ships to be scrapped by the United States, if this
plan is accepted, is thirty with an aggregate tonnage (including that of ships in
construction, if completed) of 845,740 tons.
Mark Sullivan, The Conference, First and Last, in World’s Work, March, 1922
(Garden City), 550-557 passim.
No. 208] Post-War Reparations 885
208. Post-War Reparations (1923)
BY PROFESSOR ALLYN A. YOUNG
Young (1876-1929) was Professor of Economics at Harvard.—Bibliography:
Bernard M. Baruch, Reparations and Economic Sections of the Treaty.
URING the past three years the Allied Governments and Ger-
many together have managed to make a pretty complete fiasco
of reparations. Germany has been derelict in that she has done
little or nothing to put her own domestic finances in order—something
that must be accomplished before she can make large foreign payments
with any regularity. This is a matter of much larger consequence than
her “voluntary defaults” under the terms of the treaty. The Allied
Governments have been at fault in that they have done much to em-
barrass and nothing to help the efforts of the German Government to
strengthen its domestic political and financial position. The worst
single feature in the policy of Germany’s creditor has been the French
insistence upon the absurd and vicious system of “productive guar-
antees’’—arrangements that produce little and guarantee nothing.
It does not appear that until lately the Allied Governments had given
any serious consideration to what is, after all, their most important
problem, namely, the methods by which maximum payments can be
secured from Germany with minimum friction and with a minimum of
disturbing effects upon trade and finance.
Before the reparations clauses of the Treaty of Versailles were
drafted various estimates were made of the amount Germany would
be able to pay. Estimates that were based on her wealth, her total
national income, or her taxable capacity may be put to one side, as
having no practical importance—for a country cannot export its land,
its income, or its taxes. The only estimates that can be given any
weight were based on the premise that the limits were set by the
means of payment that would be available. Assuming that the pay-
ments would be continued for a period, at the most, of not much
more than thirty years, the estimates of the present worth or capital
value of the maximum payments that Germany could be expected
to make ran from 60,000,000,000 gold marks (I know of no careful
estimate that gave a larger sum) down to a little more than half that
figure.
886 Place of the United States in the World [1923
The differences between the maximum and minimum estimates
did not turn upon matters of economic fact. They reflected, in the
main, different degrees of optimism respecting the extent to which
Germany would be assisted, or permitted, to make the largest pay-
ments possible. The policy of the Allied Governments during the
past three years has been such as to give comfort to the pessimists.
What in rọrọ was a possible maximum is now impossible. It must
be written down by a third or even a half. Unless there is a definite
change in the administration of reparations, and unless the expenses
of maintaining the armies of occupation are greatly reduced, the
minimum estimates made in 1919 will prove to have been too large.
In most of the estimates a distinction was made between the im-
mediate payments that might be made within the first few years
and the later payments that depended upon Germany’s ability to
send or sell to other countries more than she bought from them. The
estimates put the immediate payments at between 12,000,000,000
and 20,000,000,000 gold marks. Such things as the transfer of the
German merchant marine, or railway rolling stock, of the Saar mines,
or public property in ceded territories, and immediate deliveries in
kind were included in the estimates. So far as such items were con-
cerned most of the estimates have proved to be somewhat too large,
partly because the credit finally allowed on account of merchant ships
and other items was smaller than was indicated by prices prevailing
where the estimates were made, and partly because the Allies refused
to credit the reparations account with certain items—notably the
German state railways in Alsace-Lorraine—which had been allowed
for in some of the estimates.
At once the largest and the most uncertain item in the estimate
of Germany’s cash assets was the amount that might be realized from
the sale of the foreign holdings of German citizens. The total value
of such holdings before the war was possibly as much as 30,000,-
000,000 gold marks—although any estimate is hardly better than a
guess. Some of these holdings were sold during the war, some were
sequestered in enemy countries and assigned by the treaty to the
settlement of other claims, some were small individual properties,
and some were in Russia. Foreign holdings at the end of the war in
the form of negotiable securities amounted probably to not more
than 12,000,000,000 gold marks, and not more than half, or at the
No. 208] Post-War Reparations 887
most three-fifths, of these were such as could be sold in the inter-
national market within a reasonable period of time without heavy
loss. Shrunken though these assets were, the failure of the Allied
Governments to try to harvest what they could of them seems in-
explicable, although in this particular—as in others—the major por-
tion of the blame must be put upon the weakness of Germany’s fi-
nancial policy. The amazing success of the operations attending
France’s payment of the indemnity of 5,000,000,000 francs in and
after 1871 rested very largely upon her ability to induce her citizens
to give up their holdings of foreign securities and to accept rentes
instead. But, it will be remembered, French financial policy at that
time was in the able hands of Thiers and Leon Say. In the present
juncture, it is clear, France has neither sought nor given weight to
the opinions of her competent economists. In Germany, such opin-
ions may have been sought, but it does not appear that they have
been followed.
The prospects for such payments as would arise out of a favorable
balance of trade are in even worse state. Germany’s financial policy
has been such as to delay any wholesome and genuine recovery of
export trade, while the creditor nations have done much to hinder
such a recovery. To pay reparations Germany must export more
than she did before the war, or import less, or both. During the past
three years the volume of her foreign trade has been no more than
two-fifths of what it was before the war. The increasing price of
foreign exchange has from time to time given a temporary fillip to
Germany’s export industries, although it is far from certain that the
total value of her exports would not have been greater if the depre-
ciation of the mark had been less. But imports have consistently
exceeded exports. German industries, even the export industries,
are largely dependent on imported raw materials. Foods have con-
tinued to be imported. In some measure the depreciation of the
mark has itself stimulated imports, by prompting importers to seek
profits from the probable further rise of foreign exchange and of the
prices of imported goods.
Despite the loss of the profits on her former carrying trade, the
“invisible” balance of payments, reparations aside, has undoubtedly
been in Germany’s favor. The disparity between the amount of
foreign currency that would buy a mark and what a mark would buy
888 Place of the United States in the World [1923
within Germany has led to large investments in German property
on the part of capitalists in Holland and other West-European coun-
tries. (The gold the United States has been receiving from those
countries has probably come, in considerable part, as an indirect re-
sult of such operations.) Germans, too, have been exporting capital,
but in smaller amounts.
It is out of this favorable balance of imports of capital, no doubt,
that the German Government has been able to rake together the
small amount of gold exchange it has been able to turn over to its
creditors. But Germany and her creditors have allowed larger possi-
ble payments of the same sort to slip through their fingers. There
has been no attempt at an efficient control of foreign-exchange market
in Germany. Generally the best thing governments can do in such
a situation is to get out of the way of the recovery of private business
and financial enterprise. But Germany’s problem cannot be solved
by laissez-faire methods alone. For her a favorable balance of inter-
national payments is an artificial thing and must be created by artifi-
cial means. Restricting commodity imports alone, as by higher
customs duties, will mot accomplish the purpose. Invisible as well
as visible imports must be dealt with. The German Government,
as a large buyer of foreign exchange, must protect itself in some way
against the competition of those of its citizens who want to export
capital as well as against those who want to import goods.
The simplest and probably the most efficient method is to put the
foreign-exchange market under sérict supervision. I do not mean
that the government should attempt to fix the rate at which foreign
bills should be bought and sold, but that in some way, as by estab-
lishing a central market or by an efficient system of licensing, Ger-
man buyers of foreign bills should be compelled to disclose their
purposes and permit them to be passed upon. The export of German
capital could in this manner be greatly decreased... .
As matters have gone, foreign funds out of which reparation pay-
ments might have been made have eluded Germany and her creditors,
and the German Government has had to pay a ruinously high price
for the funds she has been able to secure. The full price paid is not
revealed by the quotations of foreign-exchange rates. The rest of it
one will find in the wrecking of the finances and the monetary system
of the country. The foreign-exchange operations of the government
No. 208] Post-War Reparations 880
have been an important cause—not the only cause—of the downfall
of the mark. From time to time the German Government, supplied
with new marks of its own making, has come into the market as a
buyer of foreign bills. To get any considerable part of the small and
inelastic supply away from private buyers the price had to be bid up
to an absurd figure—quite out of line with the general domestic price
level. . . . It is impossible for Germany to stabilize her currency
until she can create a favorable balance of foreign payments in some
other way than by bidding up the price of foreign bills.
Furthermore, as everybody knows, the depreciation of the mark
has multiplied the difficulties of Germany’s budget. A depreciating
currency makes most sorts of taxes unproductive. And as taxes
become unproductive larger issues of paper money are needed to
make up the deficit in the budget. At best German taxation has been
inadequate. . . . It is certain that taxes have been very much
lighter in Germany than in either Great Britain or the United
States. But in Germany there has been in addition a heavy burden
of disguised taxation, unequal and unjust in its incidence, in the
form of the general downward trend of the purchasing power of
money incomes.
Germany, in short, has not done all that she could, or even what
might reasonably have been expected of her. Through weakness or
the lack of either courage or good-will, she has handicapped herself
by her loose management of her finances and of her foreign-exchange
operations. It may be, as is claimed in France, that German policy
has changed for the worse since the days of Wirth and Rathenau.
But the policies of the Allied Governments, and particularly of France,
have been equally at fault. Preoccupied with non-productive sanc-
tions, sacrificing ultimate for immediate results, proceeding accord-
ing to no definite economic program, the Allies have permitted and
in a measure compelled Germany to do far less than what, under a
wiser régime, she might have done. It is true that they have adjured
her to balance her budget. But they have not relaxed the persistent
pressure that makes the stabilization of her currency—a necessary
preliminary—impossible.
Allyn A. Young, in Foreign Affairs (New York, 1923), I, 38-43 passim. Re-
printed by permission.
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INDEX
[The names of the authors of extracts are in Boldface.
The titles of books and articles cited are in Jtalics.]
are in SMALL CAPITALS.
BBOTT, Mather A., THE NEw GEN-
ERATION, 852-855.
Adams, Franklin P., Second Conning
Tower Book, 638, 694.
Adams, Lynn G., STATE POLICE PROB-
LEMS, 410-425.
Addams, Jane, education, 487-490;
LARGER ASPECTS OF THE WOMAN’S
MOVEMENT, 502-505.
Administration, army as school, 238.—
See also Civil Service, President, and
Table of Contents.
Agriculture, Mississippi Valley trans-
portation, 61; wing in Republican
party, 107-109, 111-112; in Philip-
pines, 137; labor in Porto Rico, 173;
pest extermination, 235; federal loans,
296-300; child labor, 480.—See also
Table of Contents.
Agriculture Yearbook, 275, 300.
Aisne-Marne offensive, 785-789.
Alaska, climatic conditions, 138-139;
aspects of lower coast, 139-142;
Nome, winter travel, 142; possibili-
ties, 143; army and gold rush, 236.
Albert, Allen D., THE WIZARDRY OF THE
AUTOMOBILE, 268-271; Social Influ-
ence of the Automobile, 271.
Alcedo, U.S.S., loss, 806.
Alcock, John, trans-Atlantic flight, 658-
662.
Aldrich, Nelson W., currency plan, 361;
and Borah, 533.
Allegiance, undivided, 30-32.
Allen, T. Warren, ROAD IMPROVEMENT,
801
The titles of pieces
271-275; Highways and Highway
Transportation, 275.
Allied loans, McAdoo’s explanation,
287; question of payment, 293-296;
amount, 722; policy, 723-724.
Ambulance service, American,
Allies, night scenes, 757-761.
American City, 412.
American Expeditionary Forces.—See
Army, Transportation of A.E.F.,
World War.
American Historical Review, 4.
American Journal of International Law,
with
Se
American Mercury, 168, 456, 460, 537,
636, 711, 851.
American Nation, 2, 77, 373.
American Political Science Review, 5.
American Review of Reviews, 5, 379, 509,
667, 836.
American Year Book 4, 409.
Americana Annual, 4.
Ames, Winthrop, as producer, 622.
Anderson, Chandler, and outbreak of
World War, 704.
Andrews, Adolphus, president’s aid,
120.
Annals of the American Academy of
Political and Social Science, 4, 25, 165,
321, 419, 425, 464, 505, 587, 596,
743.
Annuals, list, 3-4.
Anonymous, AN AMERICAN IN THE
BRITISH AIR SERVICE, 769-774.
Antilles, transport, sunk, 807.
892
Antioch College, special features, 605-
608; jobs, 605-606; entrance require-
ments, 607-608; student budgets,
608.
A ppletons’ Annual Cyclopedia, 4.
Appropriations, relation to expendi-
tures, 290-291.
Arbitration, Venezuela-Guiana, 166;
instructions to Hague delegates, 206-
207; value and limitation of treaties,
215; Wilson’s attitude, 551.—See
also Peace.
Architecture, Ladies’ Home Journal
plans, 571-573; successful utilitarian,
579-581; machine conception of style,
581-583.
Arizona, mining development, 46; and
irrigation, 47, 48; Mormons, 49;
needs, 50; political attitude, 50; pros-
pects, 50-51; recall, 405-408.
Arkansas, recall, 406, 407.
Armistice, preliminaries, 808-810; meet-
ings and signing, 811-814.
Arms, exportation to Latin America,
160.
Army, peace-time work, 234-238; as
administration school, 238; cost, 239;
and San Francisco disaster, 240-245;
illiteracy and venereal disease, 596-
597, 739; draft policy, 723; insurance,
727-730; foreigners and English lan-
guage, 735-739; training camp activi-
ties, 739-743; lack of preparedness,
742-748; dependence on Allies for
material, 744, 747.—See also World
War.
Art.—See Table of Contents.
Asmussen, Oscar, and Steinmetz, 644-
645.
Athletics.—See Sport.
Atlantic Monthly, 5, 215, 801.
Australia, and Japanese, 77.
Austria-Hungary, Hague case, 213;
armistice, 810.—See also World War.
Auto camps, 270.
Autobiographies, classification of mate-
rials, 10.
Index
Automobile, and rural life, 24-25; 268-
271; transit problem, 272; center of
registration, 334; as illustration of
big business, Ford, 473-476; and
architectural revolt, 582; develop-
ment of Ford’s method of assem-
bling, 649-654.
Avalanche, racing a snow slide, 684-689.
Aviation, peace work of army, 2353
future, 275-279; aS common carrier,
mail, passengers, 275-277; safety, fog,
277-278; types, 278-279; personal
plane, 279; Lindbergh on his trans-
Atlantic flight, 280-285; earth in-
ductor compass, 283; Sims and naval,
522; early experiments, 639-643;
Langley, 640; Wright success and de-
velopment, 641-643; first continuous
trans-Atlantic flight, 658-662; war-
time delay, 747; war-service experi-
ences, 769-774; war training, 775-780.
ABCOCK, Joseph W., Republican
campaign committee, 378.
Bagehot, Walter, on freedom of speech,
826.
Bagley, William C., American People, 3.
Bailey, Joseph W., and railroad regula-
tion, 354.
Baker, George P., and dramatic instruc-
tion, 620, 621.
Baker, Ray Stannard, Public Papers of
Woodrow Wilson, 6; Woodrow Wilson
and World Settlement, 6, 7.
Baldwin, Elbert F., THE SUPREME
COURT JUSTICES, 426-431; Supreme
Court Justices, 431.
Ballinger, Richard A., controversy, 113.
Banks, federal land, 296-299; joint-
stock land, 299-300; federal reserve
system, 301-306; La Follette on
Aldrich plan, 361-362.
Baruch, Bernard M., Reparation ana
Economic Sections of the Treaty, 7.
Baseball, interest, 681-684; elements,
681-683; apprenticeship, 683; old
players, 683.
Antioch College — Cabinet
Bassett, John Spencer, Expansion and
Reform, 3, 819, 846; PEACE CONFER-
ENCE AT VERSAILLES; 814-819;
ISSUES OF THE ELECTION OF 1924,
843-846.
Baton Rouge, as port, 63.
Beard, Charles A., American People, 3;
POLITICAL FINANCES, 380-383; Amer-
ican Government and Poitiics, 383.
Bell, Ray, rodeo champion, 57.
Berger, Victor, on Debs, 530.
Big Four, at peace conference, 816.
Bingham, Hiram, TRAINING AMERICAN
AVIATORS IN FRANCE, 775-780; Ex-
plorer in the Air Service, 780.
Biographies, classification of materials,
IO.
Bishop, Joseph B., Theodore Roosevelt, 6.
Blacklisting, demand for legalization,
468.
Bliss, Tasker H., peace conference, 815.
Blondlat, E. J., St. Mihiel, 784.
Blossom, Mary C., James J. HILL, 256-
260; James J. Hill, 260.
Bok, Edward, BEAUTIFYING THE Na-
TION, 571-575; Americanization, 575.
Books, reviewing, 616-619; libraries at
training camps, 740.
Borah, William E., on declaring acts
void, 436; character as statesman,
533-537; AGAINST THE VERSAILLES
TREATY, 820-823.
Bori, Lucrezia, and broadcasting, 669-
670.
Bourne, Randolph S.,
Schools, 590.
Bowlby, Harry L., on Sunday observ-
ance, 444.
Bowling, —, and San Francisco
graft, 401, 403.
Boxers, siege of legations, 128-132.
Boycott, demand for legalization, 468;
decision against, Hatters’ case, 470-
473-
Boynton, Percy H., THe MODERN
Drama, 619-623; History of American
Literature, 623.
Gary Public
893
Brewer, David J., Northern Securities.
decision, 93.
Brooker, Charles F., Republican cam-
paign committee, 376.
Brooks, Arthur, Executive Offices cus-
todian, 126.
Brown, Arthur
flight, 658-662.
Brown, J. F., exploit, 786-788.
Browne, Belmore, ALASKA,
Alaska, 143.
Bruere, Robert W., THE INTERNA-
TIONAL Foop PROBLEM, 719-722;
Changing America, 722.
Bryan, Charles W., vice-presidential
candidacy, 845.
Bryan, William Jennings, and Japanese
question, 75; and diplomatic appoint-
ments, 199; GOVERNMENT OWNER-
SHIP OF RAILROADS, 352-3553; in cam-
paign of 1924, 845; and Washington
Conference, 882.
Bryce, Lord, on Root, 524.
Budget, federal, benefits, 289-293; appro-
priations and expenditures, 290-291.
W., trans-Atlantic
138-143;
Buenz, ——, and Venezuela, 192.
Buffalo, Pan-American Exposition, 562-
565.
Building-stone, production, 39.
Bull, C. G., and gangrene, 655.
Bulldogging, 58.
Bureaus, in Department of Commerce
and Labor, 101-103.
Burns, William J., and San Francisco
graft, 401, 404-405.
Burroughs, John, as literary na nralist,
609-613.
Business.—See Industry.
Butterfield, Kenyon L., THE } 1RMER’S
CHANCE, 321-323; Farmer and the
New Day, 323.
ABELL, James B., as nove ist, 623—
624.
Cabinet, Department of Commerce and
Labor, 1o1-106; Wilson’s attitude,
541, 832.
894
Calhoun, Patrick, San Francisco graft,
401-405.
California, and Japanese, 74-76; train-
ing county agents, 327; recall, 405-
407; and syndicalism, 458.
California, and Titanic sinking, 249.
Cameron, George H., St. Mihiel, 783.
Canby, Henry Seidel, A LESSON FROM
THE TANKS, 765-769; Education by
Violence, 769.
Canning, George, and Monroe Doctrine,
162.
Canutt, Yakima, rodeo champion, 57.
Capital.—See Industry, Labor.
Capture, of private property at sea, 207.
Caribbean region, American imperial-
ism, 167-168, 174-180, 183-184;
future control, 180-181.
Carnegie, Andrew, philanthropy con-
sidered, 577-578.
Carolina, loss, 805.
Carpaihia, and Titanic rescue, 250.
Carrel, Alexis, war surgery, 655-656.
Carrick, Krickel K., THE FEDERAL RE-
SERVE SYSTEM, 301-306; Federal Re-
serve System, 306.
Casey, J. P., OUR GREAT AMERICAN
GAME, 681-684.
Casey, Michael, and graft, 4or.
Castro, Cipriano, and Europe, 190.
Casualties, comparative World War,
654.
Catastrophes, army service, 238; Vinh-
Long transport, 229-234.—See also
Table of Contents.
Cattle, New Mexico development, 46;
rodeo, 55-59.
Censure Bureau, activities, ror.
Century Magazine, 5.
Chafee, Zechariah, Jr., FREEDOM OF
SPEECH IN WAR TIME, 824-830.
Channing, Edward, Guide to the Study
of American History, 3, 5; United
States, 3.
Chanute, Octave, EARLY FLYING Ex-
PERIMENTS, 639-643; Recent Progress
in Aviation, 643.
Index
Charity, Legal Aid Society, 584-587.—
See also Philanthropy.
Charnwood, Lord, AN OUTSIDER’S VIEW
OF ROOSEVELT AS PEACEMAKER, 05-
96; Theodore Roosevelt, 96.
Chautauqua movement, 604.
Cheney, Sherwood A., president’s aic,
126.
Chicago, and Illinois Central, 60; traffic
problem, 416-419.
Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Rail-
road, Northern Securities, 348.
Child labor, restraints, 477-482; eco-
nomic phase, 477-478; and needs of
children, 478-479, 482; age and hours,
479-480, 600; agricultural, and rural
education, 480-481.
Children, manners of American, 27;
juvenile courts, 439-443; suffrage and
motherhood, s5o01.—See also Child
labor, Youths.
China, Boxer siege of legations, 128-
132; open-door policy, 508-509, 515;
at peace conference, 819, 864.
Chinese, view of American manners, 25-
29.
Choate, Joseph H., as ambassador, 514-
516, 875; at Hague Conference, 516;
and World War, 516-517.
Cholera, prevention, 655.
Chronicles of America, 3, 310, 476, 604.
Church and State, separation and Amer-
icanism, 30.
Citizenship, American, of Porto Ricans,
173.— See also Naturalization.
City problems.—See Table of Contents.
Civil rights, bankruptcy, 460; wartime
restriction, 730-734, 824-830.
Civil service, corrupting power of
patronage, 97-100; Philippine, 136;
appointment of consuls, 188-189; and
of ministers, 198-201; political con-
tributions, 380; recall, 405-409; dip-
lomatic service, 872-876.
Civil War, casualties, 654-655.
Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, abrogation,
514.
Calhoun — Coolidge
Clemenceau, Georges, peace conference,
816; and League, 817.
Clemens, Samuel L., career and char-
acter, 613-616.
Cleveland, Grover, Venezuela contro-
versy, 166.
Cleveland, Johnson and reform, 396-
400; checking gambling and vice,
396-397; tax reform, 397-400.
Climate, and railroad strategy, 60;
Alaskan, 138-139; Samoan, 148.
Coal, Great Lakes transportation, 37-39;
Mississippi Valley transportation, 61;
and Great Northern, 257; active and
potential power, 332, 333; center of
energy, 334.
Coast and Geodetic Survey, 103.
Coast defence, purpose, Panama forti-
fication, 219-222.
Coast Guard, wartime service, 804.
Cockburn, Sir George, capture of Wash-
ington, 225.
Cockerill, John A., and tabloid, 633.
Cocoanut, as Samoan product, 149.
Coffee, Porto Rican trade, 170.
Coleman, Le Vert, and San Francisco
disaster, 242.
Colleges and universities, business de-
mand for graduates, 600; phases of
present-day, 601-604; Antioch, 605-
608; dramatic instruction, 620, 621;
Steinmetz as professor, 648-649.
Collier’s, 36, 234.
Colonization, work of army, 235-236.
Colorado, recall, 406, 407, 409; and
syndicalism, 457.
Commerce, Great Lakes and world mar-
ket, 40; duties of Department, r01-
106; Porto Rican, 170; consuls as aid,
187-189, 872-873; European and
American competition in foreign,
193-197; Americen status in foreign,
war effect, 194-195; political effects
of foreign rivalry, 196-197.—See also
Communication, Neutrality, Tariff,
Transportation.
Commerce Court, 111, 372-373.
895
Commodity clause, 370, 371.
Communication.—See Postal service,
Radio, Telegraph, Telephone, anda
Table of Contents.
Communism.—See Syndicalism.
Comstock, Enos B., THE DESTROYERS,
802-803.
Congress of the United States, Direc-
tory, 4; restriction of immigration,
81-83; Roosevelt’s reform measures,
tog-111; Taft’s measures, 111; Pan-
ama Canal, 154; appropriations and
expenditures, 290-291; reclamation
and conservation, 308, 311; railroad
regulation, 369-373; and initiative
and referendum, 414; and judiciary
reform, 432; and President, 390-391;
Espionage Act, 824-825, 829.
Congressional Record, 7, 161.
Connecticut, and syndicalism, 457,
458.
Connolly, James B., LANDING IN NEW
YORK, 64-67.
Conover, Milton, Working Manual, 2.
Conservation, Roosevelt’s policy, 110;
controversy under Taft, 113.—See
also Table of Contents.
Constitution of the United States,
Holmes’s exposition, 510-513; Borah’s
attitude, 535; first amendment and
war times, 825-830.
Consuls, reports as aid to trade, 187-
188; basis of appointment, 188-189,
199; purpose, 872-873.
Contraband, American policy, 208;
under Declaration of London, 699-
701.
Convoy, destroyers as, 802-803.
Coolidge, Calvin, on restriction of im-
migration, 83; routine as president,
123-124; effect on health, 127; noti-
fication of Harding’s death, 836-841;
first public statement, 841-842; tak-
ing oath, 842-843; and oil scandal,
844; election, 845-846.
Coolidge, Louis A., Republican cam-
paign committee, 377.
896
Copper mining, Lake Superior, 38, 39;
Alaska, 142.
Cornelius, ——, and San Francisco
graft, 401.
Corporations, federal bureau, 103;
political contributions, 382.—See also
Industry, Trusts.
Cortelyou, George B., THE DEPART-
MENT OF COMMERCE AND LABOR,
to1-106; Address, 106; aS campaign
manager, 375-7379.
Cotton, pink bollworm infestation, 340-
340.
Council of Ten, at peace conference,
8106.
Country.—See Rural.
Country Gentleman, 279, 346.
County agricultural agents, work, 323-
Boze
Court of Customs Appeals, 111.
Courts, classification of materials, 10;
commerce and customs appeals, 111,
372-373; Taft’s reforms, 111; Philip-
pine, 134-135; recall of judicial deci-
sions, 408-409, 436; character of
criminal, 422-424; influence of poli-
tics, 460-461; and labor, 467-473;
Holmes as jurist, 510-513; legal aid
society, 584-587; and war-time es-
pionage, 733, 824-830.—See also Su-
preme Court, and Table of Contents.
Covington, transport, sunk, 807.
‘Crime, amongst Italian laborers, 68, 70;
and automobile, 270; lack of data for
study, 419; causes, 420; character of
law enforcement machinery and poli-
tics, 420-425, 460-464; juvenile, 439-
443; espionage, 730-734, 824-830;
basis of Ku-Klux lawlessness, 849-
851.—See also Trusts, and Table of
Contents.
Critics, classification of materials, rz.
Crowther, Samuel, THE FLAPPER: A
NATIONAL INSTITUTION, 33-36.
Cuba, as protectorate, 167, 174, 176;
and American investments, 177-170;
and American idealism, 181.
Index
Culberson, Charles A., and railroad
regulation, 354.
Curtis, George William, on woman suf-
frage, 408.
Cushing, attack on, 711.
Cyclopedias, list, 3-5.
Cyclops, U.S.S., loss, 806.
ACIA, Page and case, 709-710.
Daily Continent, tabloid, 633.
Dakin solution, 655.
Dana, Richard H., on diplomatic ap.
pointments, 198.
Daniels, Josephus, and Sims, 520; A
BREAKER OF PRECEDENTS, 538-543}
Woodrow Wilson, 543.
Darrow, Clarence S., LEGISLATING
Morats, 452-456; Ordeal of Prohibi-
tion, 450.
Daugherty, H. M., oil scandal, 843-844.
Davenport, Eugene, SCIENTIFIC FARM-
ING, 317-321.
Davis, Arthur P., and reclamation, 309.
Davis, James J., A LABORER MEETS
His First CAPITALIST, 465-467; Iron
Puddler, 467.
Davis, John W., presidential candidacy,
845.
Davis, Richard Harding, AN EMBAT-
TLED PRESS CORRESPONDENT, 749-
754; With the Allies, 754.
Dawes, Charles G., BENEFITS OF THE
BUDGET, 289-293; Report of the
Director, 293; vice-presidential candi-
dacy, 845.
Day, William R., as Justice, 429.
Debates in Massachusetts Constitutional
Convention, 416.
Debs, Eugene, as social leader, 530-532.
Debt, first Liberty Loan appeal, 286-
289; Allied, 287, 293-206, 722-724;
federal farm loans, 296-300.
Declaration of London, on neutrality,
695-696; on contraband, 699-701.
Democracy, reality, 395; Wilson’s faith,
548-550.
Democratic party, and government
Copper Mining — Eliot
ownership, 352-353.—See also Pol-
itics.
Denby, Edwin, oil scandal, 843-844.
Department of Agriculture, Department
Circulars, 327.
Department of Commerce and Labor,
scope, plans, 101—106.
Dependencies, peace work of army, 235-
236.—See also Protectorates, and
Table of Contents.
De Rochemont, Richard G., TABLOID
JOURNALISM, 632-636; Tabloids, 636.
Destroyers, duties, 223-226; poem on,
as convoy, 802-803.
Dewey, George, and Venezuelan contro-
versy, 191-192.
Dickman, Joseph T., St. Mihiel, 783.
Dictionary of American Biography, 4.
Diplomatic service, appointments, 198-
201: purpose, 872, 873; hindrances to,
as career, 873-875; legations and
allowances, 875-876; reform begin-
nings, 876.—See also Foreign relations.
Disarmament, instructions to Hague
delegates, 204—205.—See also Peace,
Washington Conference.
Dodd, William E., Public Papers of
Woodrow Wilson, 6; Woodrow Wilson,
J.
Doheny, E. M., oil scandal, 843-845.
Domestic servants, attitude, 27, 28.
Dominican Republic, intervention, 167,
168, 175, 176, 183.
Dover, Elmer, Republican campaign
committee, 376.
Downey, Ezekiel Henry, WORKMEN’S
COMPENSATION, 482-486; Workmen’s
Compensation, 486.
Drama, character and trend of modern,
619-623.
Drama League of America, 622.
Dress, Samoan, 151.
Duryea, Charles B., and automobile,
474.
Duval, Pierre, war surgery, 656.
Dvinsk, transport, sunk, 807.
Dysentery, prevention, 655.
897
ARTH INDUCTOR COMPASS,
283.
Eastman, Max, Is WoMAN SUFFRAGE
IMPORTANT ? 498-501.
Eaton, Walter P., on drama, 620.
Economic conditions, classification of
materials, 11-12; general distribution
of prosperity, 33-36.—See also
Agriculture, Commerce, Finances,
Industry, Labor, Mining, and Table
of Contents.
Economic Geography, 63, 332, 335-
Education, illiteracy, 32, 480, 596, 738;
of negroes, 43-44; Philippine, 133-
134; Porto Rican, 169-170; influence
of automobile, 269; agricultural, 320,
323-327; attitude of children, 478;
rural standard, 481; and labor, 481;
technical, of women, 490-493; in
training camps, 735-740; mechanical
war and soldier, 767—769.—See also
Colleges, and Table of Contents.
Edwards, Walter A., heroic exploit,
220-234.
Eickemeyer, Rudolf, and Steinmetz,
645-647.
Elections, of 1904, Roosevelt’s attitude,
88-90; Republican attitude and man-
agement, 109, 374-375; Of 1908,
Republican attitude, 109; of 1912,
Roosevelt and candidacy, 113-122;
length of presidential campaign, chief
fields, 375-376; organization, activ-
ities, 376-379; funds, 377-378, 380-
383; management of voters, 383;
importance of presidential, 387; na-
tional conventions, 391-395; issue in
1924, 843-846; of 1928, 855-857.—
See also Politics.
Electric car lines, influence of inter-
urban, 23-24; and automobiles,
270.
Elephant Butte project, 47-48.
Eliot, Charles W., PROHIBITION, 448-
451; Late Harvest, 451, 601; as speaker,
556; EDUCATION SINCE THE WORLD
War, 596-601; and elective sys-
898
tem, 603; AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL
PROBLEMS, 876-881.
Elkins, Stephen B., and railroad regu-
lation, 369, 372.
Elkins Act, 369.
Emerson, Walter S., on Steinmetz,
645-640.
Emigration. —See Immigration.
Emory, Frederick L., THE CONSULAR
SERVICE Arps TRADE, 186-189; Our
Consuls and Our Trade, 189.
Employers’ Liability Act, 109.
Encyclopedia Britannica, 4; These Event-
ful Years, 4.
Encyclopedia of Social Sciences, 3.
English language, teaching in army,
737-738.
Epochs of American History, 819, 846.
Equality, as American doctrine, 27;
race-equality laws ignored, 452-453.
Erzberger, Mathias, armistice, 811-812.
Espionage Act, wartime hysteria, 730-
734; and freedom of speech, provisions
and interpretation, 824-830.
Evans, Wainwright, Revolt of Modern
Youth, 443.
Evans, Waldo, SAMOA, 146-151; Ameri-
can Samoa, 151.
Evening schools, 508.
Executive.-—See Administration, Pres-
ident.
Expenditures, relation to appropria-
tions, 290-201.
Express, and parcel post, 265.
ALABA, sinking, 711.
Fall, A. B., oil scandal, 843-844.
Farley, —— , and San Francisco strike,
402.
Federal farm loans and board, opera-
tions of federal land banks, 296-299;
of joint-stock land banks, 299-300;
purpose of board, 338-339.
Federal land banks, operation, 296-299.
Federal reserve system, explained, 301-
306; analogy in federal farm board,
335.
Index
Field, William H., on tabloid, 634.
Finances, oil wells, 52-54; Philippine,
137-138; of political campaign, 377-
378, 380-383; of enlarged school
ideals, 590; reparations, 885-889.—
See also Banks, Budget, Debt, For-
eign investments, Taxation, and
Table of Contents.
Finland, transport, attacked, 807.
Fish, Carl R., Path of Empire, 3.
Fisheries, federal bureau, 103; arbitra~
tion of northeastern question, 212.
Fitch, Clyde, as dramatist, 620, 621.
Flapper, character, as symbol, 33-
35-
Foch, Ferdinand, and American army,
781; armistice, 811-812.
Food, wartime common stock, Ameri-
can contribution, 719-721.
Ford, Henry, career, 473-477; INGE-
NUITY IN Motor MANUFACTURING,
649-654; My Life and Work, 654; and
Muscle Shoals project, 663, 666.
Ford, Tirey L., and graft, 401.
Foreign Affairs, 5, 83, 881, 889.
Foreign investments, relation to protec-
torates, 177-180; development of
American, 195-196; political aspect,
196-197; forcible collection of con-
tractual debts, 204-205.
Foreign Policy Association, publica-
tions, 5.
Foreign relations, sources, 5; classifica-
tion of materials, 9-10; and Japanese
immigration, 74-77; Boxer siege of
legations, 128-132; power of Presi-
dent, 388-389; Hay as secretary of
state, 506-509; Choate’s services,
514-517; elements of Wilson’s policy,
548-553; diplomatic service, 872-873;
postbellum attitude and problems,
876-881; and state rights, 880.—See
also Latin America, Peace, World
War, and Table of Contents.
Forests, fire patrol, 235; water power in
national, 309-310.—See also Lum-
ber.
Eliot — Grain
Fortification, of Panama Canal, 210-
222
Forum, 5, 100, 876.
Fosdick, Raymond B., TRAINING CAMP
ACTIVITIES, 739-743.
Foulke, William Dudley, THe CAM-
PAIGN OF 10912, 113-117; Hoosier
Autobiography, 117; on diplomatic
appointments, 199.
Fourteen Points, in peace conference,
816.
Fourteenth amendment, Holmes’s expo-
sition, 512.
Fox raising in Alaska, 142.
France, and American trade competi-
tion, 193; Hague cases, 212-213; and
open door, 508; at Washington Con-
ference, 883.—See also World War.
Frank, Glenn, PIETY AND PLAYFULNESS,
444-448; American Looks at His
World, 448, 579; THE PROBLEM OF
SPENDING, 576-5709.
Frankfurter, Felix, OLIVER WENDELL
HoiMeEs, 510-513; Constitutional
Opinions of Justice Holmes, 513.
Franklin, Fabian, FIVE TO FOUR IN THE
SUPREME COURT, 436-439.
Fraternities, importance of collegiate,
602-603.
Freedom of speech, wartime restriction
considered, 824-830; true meaning,
826-827; individual and social inter-
ests, 827-828; judicial misinterpreta-
tion, 828-830.
French language, teaching in training
camps, 740.
Frothingham, Thomas G., THE AMERI-
CAN TRANSPORTS, 794-799; Naval
History of the World War, 799, 807;
U-Boat RAIDS OFF THE AMERICAN
Coast, 804-807.
Fruit, Porto Rican trade, 170.
Funston, Frederick, on army and San
Francisco disaster, 240-245.
Furniture, designs in Ladies’ Home
Journal, 573; club-plan graft, 586.
Furuseth, Andrew, and graft, gor.
899
AMBLING, checking, 401-402.
Gangrene, prevention, 655.
Gardens, Ladies’ Home Journal plans,
573-
Gardner, Augustus P., and Lodge, 529.
Gardner, E. C., THE PLANNING OF
CITIES, 409-412; Planning the Com-
mercial Portions of Cities, 412.
Gas, delay in manufacturing war, 747.
Gavit, John Palmer, A WORKADAY COL-
LEGE, 605—608.
General Electric Company, and Stein-
metz, 646-648.
Gentleman’s agreement, with Japan, 75.
George V of Great Britain, and out-
break of World War, 705.
Gerard, James W., My Four Years in
Germany, 7.
Germany, consuls and trade, 187-188;
and Venezuela, 190-192; and Ameri-
can trade competition, 193, 197;
Hague cases, 212; and open door, 508.
—See also World War.
Gibbons, James, and Roosevelt, 86-87.
Gladden, George, NATURE AND JOHN
BuRROUGHS, 609-613; John Bur-
roughs, 613.
Gleaves, Albert, on repair of German
ships, 797.
Goethals, George W., THE PANAMA
CANAL, 153-156; Isthmian Canal, 156.
Goodrich, C. F., and San Francisco dis-
aster, 242.
Gogorza, Emilio de, and broadcasting,
670.
Government, classification of materials,
7-8; ownership of railroads, 352-355;
educational need in enlarged prob-
lems, 598.—See also Administration,
Congress, Courts, Laws, Politics,
Popular Government and Table of
Contents.
Graft, in cities, 400-405; oil scandal,
843-845.
Grahame, Leopold, THE LATIN VIEW
OF THE MONROE DOCTRINE, 161-165.
Grain, Great Lakes transportation, 40.
goo
Grattan, C. Hartley, AN IMPRESSION-
ABLE DIPLOMAT, 706-711; Walter
Hines Page Legend, 711.
Great Britain, and Venezuela, 166; con-
suls and trade, 187; and American
trade competition, 193, 197; Hague
cases, 212-213; Hay, Choate, and Page
as ambassadors, 507, 514-516, 706-
711; and open door, 508; Page on
outbreak of war, 700-706.—See also
World War.
Great Lakes, economic empire, 36-40.
Great Northern Railroad, Northern
Securities, 91-94, 347-352, 369; Hill
and development, 256-259.
Greeley, William B., RELATION OF
GEOGRAPHY TO TIMBER SUPPLY, 327-
331.
Greely, Adolphus W., SAN FRANCISCO
DISASTER, 240-245; Special Report,
245.
Green, Fitzhugh, “STAND By To Ram!”,
220-234.
Gregory, Thomas W., on Espionage
Act, 825, 829.
Grey, Sir Edward, and outbreak of
World War, 705; and Dacia case, 709-
710.
Grieve, Mackenzie, attempted trans-
Atlantic flight, 659.
Groom, John C., state police, 418.
Gross, Michael, ON Movine PICTURES,
692-6093.
Guides, to sources, 2-3.
Gulflight, torpedoing, 711.
Gulfport, Miss., as port, 63.
Giindell, General von, armistice, 811.
Guyot, Yves, and Roosevelt, 89.
AGUE CONFERENCE, Second,
instructions to American delegates,
203-209; relative importance of sub-
jects, 208; results, convention on
international disputes, 209-213;
Choate’s services, 514; conventions
on neutrality, 695-699.
Hague Tribunal, treaties on reference
index
to, 206; Root on development into
court, 207; procedure, 211; cases, 211~
213.
Haiti, intervention, 168, 175, 176, 183-
184.
Hale, Bayard, as unofficial agent, 201.
Halstead, Albert, THE PARTY CAMPAIGN
CoMMITTEE, 374-379; Chairman Cor-
telyou, 379.
Hammond, John Winthrop, STEINMETZ,
644-649; Charles Proteus Steinmetz,
649.
Hand, Augustus N., on freedom of
speech, 828.
Hanna, Marcus A., and Roosevelt’s
succession to presidency, 84-86;
standpatism, 108-109; and campaign
of 1904, 374.
Harding, Warren G., presidency and
health, 127; as President, 831-836;
amiability, and popular reactions,
831-833; and advice, 833; and politi-
cal expediency, 833-834; labor, busi-
ness adminstration, 834-835; oil
scandal of administration, 843-845;
and World Court, 868, 869; foreign
policy, 877; and Washington Confer-
ence, 881-883.
Harger, Charles Moreau, ARIZONA AND
New Mexico, 46-51; Our Two New
States, 51; THE OIL FIELDS OF OKLA-
HOMA, 51-55; Romance of the Oil
Fields, 55.
Harlan, John Marshall, NORTHERN
SECURITIES CASE, 93, 347-352; as
Justice, 427-428; and Lurton, 420.
Harlan, Laura, social secretary, 125.
Harper, William R., University of Chi-
cago, 604.
Harper’s Magazine, 29, 498, 722, 738,
761.
Hart, Albert Bushnell, American Nation,
2; Guide to the Study of American His-
tory, 3, 5; Cyclopedia of American
Government, 5; Roosevelt Encyclopedia,
6; Selected Addresses and Public
Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 6; REN-
Grattan — Howland
EDIES FOR THE SOUTHERN PROBLEM,
41-45; THE INITIATIVE AND REFER-
ENDUM, 412-416.
Harvard College, elective system, 603.
Harvard Law Review, 513, 830.
Hatters’ case, decision, 470-473.
Hawaii, economic conditions, 143-145;
political control, 145-146; Japanese
problem, 146.
Hawker, Harry, attempted trans-At-
lantic flight, 659.
Hawthorne, Hildegarde, OUR MARK
TwaIN, 613-616; Mark Twain, 616.
Hay, John, A STATESMAN’S VIEW OF
A PRESIDENT, 86-90; and temporary
succession, 89-90; WARNING TO THE
GERMAN EMPEROR, 190-192; arbitra-
tion treaties, 206; as ambassador,
506-507; as secretary of state, 507-
509, 515; traits, 509.
Haynes, Ellwood, and automobile,
474.
Hazard, Caroline, WATERS OF THE
YOSEMITE, 690-691; Yosemite, 601.
Health, in Philippines, 134; in Canal
Zone, 155-156; army work, 234, 236-
237; physical examination of children,
478, 482: venereal disease, 597; pro-
tection at training camps, 739, 742.—
See also Surgery.
Hendrick, Burton J., Walier H. Page,
7, 706; THE AGE oF Bic BUSINESS,
473-477; Age of Big Business, 477.
Heney, Francis J., prosecution of graft,
401.
Hepburn Act, 109, 369-370.
Hergesheimer, Joseph, as novelist, 624-
626.
Herne, James A., as dramatist, 620.
Hill, Howard C., Roosevelt and the Ca-
ribbean, 6.
Hill, James J., Northern Securities case,
91-94, 347-352; development of
Great Northern, 256-259; character,
259-260.
Historical Outlook, 5.
History, contemporary historians, 3.
QOI
Hochbaum, H. W., AGRICULTURAL Ex-
TENSION WORK, 323-327; Methods and.
Results of Coöperative Extension Work,
DA
Hockett, Homer C., Political and Social
History, 3.
Holcombe, Arthur N., Political Parties
of Today, 5, 112; DISTINCTIONS
AMONG PARTIES, 106-112; THE RE-
CALL, 405-409.
Holleben, Baron von, and Venezuela,
IQI-1Q2.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Northern
Securities decision, 93; as Justice and
jurist, 428-429, 510-513; THE LABOR
Union Boycott, 470-473; on free-
dom of speech, 828.
Holtzendorff, Henning von, on damaged’
interned ships, 796.
Homer, Louise, and broadcasting,
670.
Honduras, neutralized, 179.
Hooker, Elon, ignored wartime offer,
747-
Hoover, Herbert, on Allied debts, 293-
296; presidential election, 855-857.
Hoover, I. H., White House head usher,
125.
Horses, rodeo sports, 56-58; army re-
mount service, 237-238.
Hotels, conditions, 20; automobile and
rural, 271; workings of modern, 677-
680.
House, Edward M., Intimate Papers, 7;
as unofficial agent, 201; on Page’s
unneutral attitude, 708.
Household economics, training, 492.
Houston, David F., AN ESTIMATE OF
Wooprow WILSON, 553-561; Hight
Years with Wilson’s Cabinet, 561.
Howe, Frederie C., THE GREAT EMPIRE:
BY THE LAKES, 37-40; WaArRr-TIME
HYSTERIA, 730-734; Confessions of a
Reformer, 734.
Howland, Harold, Theodore Roosevelt,
3, 311; RECLAMATION AND CONSERVA-
TION, 327-311.
go2
Hudson, Manley O., WORLD COURTING,
867-870.
Huerta, Victoriano, Wilson’s attitude,
159, 168, 551.
Hughes, Charles Evans, Latin-Ameri-
can policy, 168; PAN-AMERICAN PROB-
LEMS, 181-185; Address before Ameri-
can Chamber of Commerce, 185; as
Justice, 430; and World Court, 868,
869; Washington Conference, 879,
883.
Hunter, W. D., and pink bollworm, 342.
Hutchinson, Woods, on World War
fatalities, 654.
Hyde, Charles Cheney, International
Law, 5; THE UNITED STATES AS A
NEUTRAL, 695-701.
Hydroelectric power, federal conserva-
tion, 309-310; active and potential,
332, 333; center of energy, 333, 334;
Muscle Shoals project, 662-667.
Hyphenated Americanism, 29-32.
CE WATER, as American beverage,
27.
Idaho, recall, 405-407.
Idealism, American, 181-182.
Illinois Central Railway System, stra-
tegic location, 59—63.
Illiteracy, immigrant test, 32; rural,
480; in army, 596, 738.
Immigration, immigrants and true
Americanism, 30-32; literary test,
32; and South, 41-42; federal bureau,
103, 105-106; foreigners in army,
735-739.—see also Table of Con-
tents.
Imperialism.—See Intervention, Latin
America.
Independent.—See Outlook.
Indiana, recall, 406.
Industrial Workers of the World, war-
time, 732.—See also Syndicalism.
Industry and business, rural touch, 23-
25; Great Lakes empire, 36-40; com-
bination of elements, 37; revolution
in methods, 37-38; elements of oil,
Index
50-55; wing in Republican party,
107-109; and American idealism, 182;
agriculture as, 335-336; planning
section of city, 409-412; college
graduates in, 600; telephone as in-
strument; 674-675.—See also Eco-
nomic conditions, Labor, Manu-
factures, Power, Trusts, and Table
of Contents.
Ingersoll, Ernest, lodge, 611.
Initiative and referendum, scope, 412;
arguments against, 413; general
character, need, 413-416.
Injunction, in labor cases, 467.
Inland Waterways Commission, 310.
Insurance, for soldiers, 727-730.
Internal improvements, Philippine,
135-136.—See also Reclamation,
Transportation.
International commissions of inquiry,
under Hague Convention, 210-211.
International Ideals, 6.
International law.—See Hague Con-
ference, Neutrality.
Interstate commerce, Holmes’s exposi-
tion, 511-512.
Interstate Commerce Commission,
strengthening, 108, 109, III, 370-373.
Intervention, Monroe Doctrine and,
161-168; in Caribbean reign, 167-168,
174-181; policy of regulation, 179-
180.
Inventions.—See Table of Contents.
Iowa, and syndicalism, 457.
Iron, Great Lakes industry, 37-39.
Irrigation, in Southwest, 47—48; in Porto
Rico, 170.—See also Reclamation.
Irwin, Wallace, cowboy verses, 56;
MonroE Doctrinincs, 152; Ran-
dom Rhymes, 152, 203; CLASP HANDS,
YE NATIONS! 202-203.
Isolation, end, 197; policy, 204; Hay’s
attitude, 507; and Allied loans, 724;
and League of Nations, 863, 866-867;
postbellum attitude, 876-881.
Issoudun, American aviation training,
775-780.
Hudson — Land
Italians, as manual laborers, 67-71.
Italy, Hague cases, 211-213.
Po L. P., on philanthopy, 577.
Jacob Jones, U.S.S., loss, 806.
James, Edwin L., THe DoucHBoYsS
OvER THE Tor, 785-789; Americans
in Second Marne, 789.
James, Ollie M., and railroad regulation,
354-
Japan, Roosevelt’s attitude, 96; Hague
case, 212; and open door, 508; Shan-
tung, 819, 864.—See also Russo-
Japanese War.
Japanese, immigration problem, 74-77;
in schools, 74-75; gentleman’s agree-
ment, 75; restriction on land-holdings,
75-76; as international problem, 76-
77; problem in Hawaii, 146.
Jefferson, Thomas, and deportation of
negroes, 41; Roosevelt’s attitude, 107;
and elective system, 602.
Jervis, Richard H., as Coolidge’s guard,
123.
Jewish Welfare Board, at training
camps, 739.
Johnson, Allen, Chronicles of America,
3; Dictionary of American Biography, 4.
Johnson, Gerald W., THE Ku-KLUXER,
846-851.
Johnson, Tom, A City REFORMER, 396-
400; My Story, 400.
Joint-stock land banks, 299-300.
Juneau, 141.
Juries, character, 423.
Tustice.—See Courts.
ENT, F. I., and outbreak of World
War, 702, 704.
Kentucky, and syndicalism, 457.
Keough, Frederic W., EMPLOYMENT OF
DISABLED SERVICE MEN, 591-506.
Kerr, Mark, and trans-Atlantic flight,
650.
Ketchikan, 139-140.
Kibbey, J. H., on Arizona and New
Mexico, 46.
993
Kilmer, Joyce, THE CATHEDRAL OF
RHEIMS, 754-757; Poems, 757.
Kinross, Albert, How IT FEELS TO BE
TORPEDOED, 799-801.
Kitchen, of modern hotel, 678.
Klorer, John, and saving New Orleans
from flood, 251-255.
Knapp, Martin A., Commerce Court,
BTS
Knight case, 94, 347.
Knights of Columbus,
camps, 739.
Knox, Philander C., on Roosevelt, 88;
Northern Securities case, 92-93; and
Central America, 167.
Kohler, Frederick, and reform, 397.
Kohlsaat, Hermann H., From Mc-
Kinley to Harding, 6, 86; ROOSEVELT
AND HANNA, 84-86.
Ku Klux Klan, new, 846-851; beliefs of
rank and file, 846-848; victims, 848-
849; basis of lawlessness, 849-851.
at training
ABOR, machine substitution, 37-
40; Italian, 67-71; duties of De-
partment, ror, 103, 105; in Porto
Rico, 171, 173; and anti-trust laws,
360, 470-473; strikes, 397; criminal
syndicalism, 456-460; women, 493-
498; employment of disabled soldiers,
591-596, 658; individual limitations,
649-650; Ford’s method for mass
production, 650-654.—See also Child
Labor, and Table of Contents.
Ladies’ Home Journal, architectural
plans, 571-573; garden and furniture
lessons, 573; reproductions of pic-
tures, 573-575-
La Follette, Robert M., Autobiography,
6, 365; and presidential condidacy,
114, 845; A LIBERAL’S PROTEST, 360-
365.
Lamar, Joseph R., as Justice, 431.
Land, restriction on Japanese holding,
75-76; system in Philippines, 137.—
See also Agriculture, Conservation,
Reclamation.
904
Lane, Franklin K., on mechanical power,
334; on illiteracy, 480; on Wilson’s
going to Paris, 542; as oil attorney,
845.
Lang, Louis J., How COOLIDGE GOT THE
News, 836-843.
Langdon, Olivia L., Mrs. Clemens, 614.
Langley, S. P., flying machine, 640.
Language, common, in Philippines, 133-
134.
Lansing, Robert, Peace Negotiations, 7;
and Wilson’s going to Paris, 542;
peace conference, 814.
Latané, J. H., America as a World
Power, 3.
Latin America, revolts and recognition,
168.—See also Intervention, Mex-
ico, Monroe Doctrine, and Table of
Contents.
Laundry, of modern hotel, 679.
Lawlor v. Loewe, decision, 470-473.
Lawrence, William, HENRY CABOT
LODGE AND THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS,
863-867; Henry Cabot Lodge, 867.
Laws, Supreme Court and declaring
void, 436-439; disuse as remedy for
bad, 452-455; and folkways, 455-
456.—See also Government.
League of Nations, Wilson’s part and
position, 814, 817, 821, 864; main
features, 818; as instrument of im-
perialism, 821; Wilson on reasons for,
858-862; Lodge’s objections, 862-
866; article 10, 865; Lodge and reser-
vations, 866; American attitude and
duty, 878, 880-881.
League to Enforce Peace, purpose and
plan, 214-218.
Legal Aid Society of New York, work,
584-587.
Leipziger, Henry M., free evening
lectures, 604.
Lewis, William D., Theodore Roosevelt,
6; Progressive platform, 116.
Liberty Loan, appeal for first, 286-289;
anticipation, 287.
Libraries, at training camps, 740.
Index
Lichnowsky, Fiirst von, and outbreak
of World War, 703, 705.
Liggett, Hunter, St. Mihiel, 783.
Light-house establishment, 103.
Lincoln, Abraham, and deportation of
negroes, 41.
Lind, John, Mexican mission, 158-159.
Lindbergh, Charles A., AN EPOCHAL
FLIGHT, 280-285.
Lindsay, Vachel, A POET QUESTIONS
PROGRESS, 627-631; Collected Poems,
631.
Lindsey, Benjamin Barr, THE WORK OF
A JUVENILE COURT, 430-443; Revolr
of Modern Youth, 443.
Liquor, American drinking, 21; Puri-
tans and, 450-451; evil, 451; protec-
tion from, in training camps, 739.—
See also Prohibition.
Literary Digest, MOBILIZATION “ BLUN-
DERS,” 226-228; cited, 228, 730;
INSURANCE FOR SOLDIERS, 727-730.
Literature, libraries at training camps,
741.—See also Table of Contents.
Lloyd George, David, and broadcasting,
671; peace conference, 816; and
League, 817.
Local government, party organization,
384-385.—See also City problems.
Lodge, Henry Cabot, Senate and the
League of Nations, 7; personal char-
acteristics, 527-530; WAR WITH GER-
MANY, 722-727.
London, Charmian K., PATRIARCHAL
HAWAN, 143-146: Our Hawaii, 146.
London, East End, 489-490; Americans
in, and outbreak of war, 701-705.
Louisiana, recall, 406; and syndicalism,
457.
Lovejoy, Owen R., PROHIBITING CHILD
LABOR, 477-482; Standards of Child
Welfare, 482.
Low, Sir A. Maurice, Too PROUD TO
FIGHT, 544-547; Woodrow Wilson,
547-
Lowden, Frank O., TuE New Eco-
NOMICS OF FARMING, 335-340; Ad-
Lane — Maxim
dress before the American Farm Bu-
reau Federation, 340; Republican
campaign committee, 376.
Lowell, A. Lawrence, A LEAGUE TO
ENFORCE PEACE, 214-218.
Lowry, Edward G., WILLIAM S. Sms,
518-522; Washington Close-Ups, 522.
Ludendorff, Erich F. W. von, on war-
time morale, 826.
Lumber, Great Lakes supply, 39; Mis-
sissippi Valley transportation, 62;
and Great Northern, 257; problems of
availability of supply, 327-328; for-
estry as necessity, 328-332; foreign
supply, 329; use, elimination of
waste, 329-330.
Lurton, Horace H., THE Coat Monop-
OLY, 356-359; as Justice, 428-420.
Lusitania, sinking and Wilson’s speech,
544-547, 559; Wilson’s first note, 711-
TES.
Lynching, as remedy, 42; analogy in
international relations, 214.
Ms Adoo, William Gibbs, THE LIB-
ERTY LOAN, 286-289; as oil at-
torney, 845; presidential candidacy,
845.
MacArthur, Douglas, on mobilization
of militia, 228.
McCarroll, Bonnie, rodeo champion, 57.
McCormack, John, and broadcasting,
669-670.
McCormick, R. R., and tabloid, 633.
McCrary, Frank R., and outbreak of
World War, 704.
McDonald, R. E., and pink bollworm,
344.
MacFarland, Henry, Jonn Hay, 506-
509; Secretary John Hay, 509.
McGee, Leonard, THe New YORK
LEGAL Arm SOCIETY, 584-587.
Machine guns, delay, 747.
Machinery, displacement of labor, 37-
40; mechanical soldiers, 767-7609.
MacKaye, Percy, as dramatist, 622.
MacKaye, Steele, as dramatist, 620.
9°5
McKenna, Joseph, as Justice, 428.
McKinley, A. E., Collected Material for
the Study of the War, 7.
McKinley, William, and Hay, 506-507.
McLaughlin, A. C., Cyclopedia of
American Government, 5.
McMaster, John B., United States and
the World War, 7.
McNamee, Graham, A BROADCASTING
STUDIO, 667-672; You’re on the Air,
672.
MacVeagh, Wayne, and State portfolio,
89.
Maesiretti, Frank, and graft, 403-404.
Mahan, Alfred T., FORTIFY THE PAN-
AMA CANAL, 219-222.
Mandatories, provision in peace of
Versailles, 818.
Mann, James R., and railroad regula-
tion, 372.
Mann-Elkins Act, 372.
Manners, American, 25-29.
Mannix, D. Pratt, THE LIGHT CAVALRY
OF THE SEAS, 223-226; Light Cavalry
of the Seas, 226.
Manufactures, federal bureau, 103;
characteristics of American, 473-474;
Ford’s automobile as illustration,
474-477; development of Ford’s as-
sembling, 650-654; telephone as ele-
ment, 673-674.—See also Industry.
Market reports, and rural life, 23.
Markham, Charles H., THE STRATEGY
OF LocaTING A RAILROAD, 59-63;
Illinois Central System, 63.
Marlatt, Charles L., and pink boll-
worm, 344.
Masefield, John, AMERICAN AMBULANCE
FELD SERVICE, 757-761; Harvest of
the Night, 761.
Massachusetts. Debates in Constitutional
Convention, 416; and _ syndicalism,
457; in election of 1928, 856.
Matthews, Brander, on book reviews,
618-619; and dramatic instruction,
621.
Mazim, Sir Hiram S., and aviation, 640.
goo
Mayo, Katherine, WOMEN WITH THE
Y. M. C. A., 790-793; “That Damn
V703
Meat Inspection Act, 109.
Mediation and good offices, in Russo-
Japanese War, 95-96, 202-203; offer
to Mexico, 158-159; in Hague Con-
vention, 210.
Medicine.—See Health.
Melting Pot, fallacy, 79-80.
Meningitis, prevention, 655.
Mensdorff, Graf Albert, and outbreak
of World War, 703, 705.
Mentor, 143.
Merritt, Dixon, THe TASK OF THE
PRESIDENCY, 123-127; Calvin Coolidge
and His Job, 127.
Metcalf, Victor H., and Sims, 521.
Meuse-Argonne, as America sector,
782.
Mexicans, in New Mexico, 48-49.
Mexico, Wilson on relations (1913),
156-161; policy toward, 157, 159-
161, 168, 551, 715-716; conditions,
157-158; Lind mission, result, 158-
159; Seward’s policy, 166; and Cen-
tral America, 179-180; and American
imperialism, 180; Hague case, 212;
mobilization of American militia,
226-228.—See also Latin Amer-
ica.
Militia, mobilization for Mexican bor-
der, 226-228.
Mills, Enos A., RACING AN AVALANCHE,
684-689; Spell of the Rockies, 689.
Mills, W. J., on Southwest, 48, 50.
Miner, Luella, PRISONERS IN PEKING,
128-132; Prisoner in Peking, 132.
Mining, Great Lakes region, 38; Ari-
zona, 46; Mississippi Valley trans-
portation, 61-62; Alaska, 141, 142.
Minorities, exploitation by Peace of
Versailles, 822.
Mississippi River, flood, saving New
Orleans, 251-255.
Mississippi Valley, Illinois Central and
transportation, 59-63.
index
Mixer, Knowlton, AMERICAN COOPERA-
TION IN Porto Rico, 169-173; Porte
Rico, 173.
Moldavia, transport, sunk, 807.
Moley, Raymond, POLITICS AND CRIME,
460-464.
Monopoly.—See Trusts.
Monroe Doctrine, verses on Latin atti-
tude, 152; Latin view, 161-165; orig-
inal, general acceptance, 161-162,
165-166; and intervention, 162-168;
Polk’s addition, 165; and paramount
interest, 166; Germany and Ven-
ezuela, 190-192; Hay’s attitude, 507;
and League of Nations, 863.
Montana, and syndicalism, 457.
Moon, Parker T., Syllabus on Inter-
national Relations, 5.
Morgan, J. Pierpont, and Northern
Securities, 92, 348-340.
Morley, John, on Roosevelt, go.
Mormons, in Arizona, 49.
Morning Advertiser, tabloid, 633.
Mortgages, federal farm loans, 296-
300.
Morton, Paul, and rate cutting, 369.
Mount Vernon, transport, attacked, 807.
Mountaineering, racing an avalanche,
684-689.
Moving pictures, satirical poetry on,
692-694.
Muirhead, James Fullarton, A TRav-
ELER AT THE OPENING OF THE CEN-
TURY, 14-21; America, 21.
Mulvane, David W., Republican cam-
paign committee, 376.
Mumford, Lewis, THe ARCHITECTURE
OF EXPEDIENCY, 579-583; Sticks and
Stones, 583.
Munro, William B., THE NATIONAL
CONVENTIONS, 391-395.
Munsey, Frank A., and tabloid, 633.
Murphy, Franklin, Republican cam-
paign committee, 376.
Muscle Shoals, hydroelectric project
and problem, 662-667.
Music, Thomas as orchestra leader,
Mayo — Nicaragua
565-570; conductor’s real work, 568-
569.
Muzzey, David P., American Adventure,
a
Myers, Denys P., RESULTS OF THE
HAGUE CONVENTION, 209-213: Record
of the Hague, 213.
ATION, cited, 5, 532; EUGENE DERS,
5307532.
National Civil Service Reform League,
APPOINTMENT OF MINISTERS, 198-
201; Report on the Foreign Service, 201.
National Conservation (Commission,
STT.
National conventions, preliminaries,
391-392; voting, 393-394; control,
394; sufficiency, 394-395.
National farm loan associations, 298.
Naturalists, Burroughs, 609-613.
Naturalization, Japanese and, 75-76.
Navigation, federal bureau, 103.
Navy, and coast defence, 219-222;
duties of destroyers, 223—226; rescue
exploit, 229-234; Sims as officer, 518-
522; at outbreak of World War, 723;
repair of German ships, 796-798; de-
stroyers as convoy, 802-803; losses
due to submarine attacks, 805, 806.
—See also Submarines, Washington
Conference.
Negroes, remedies for problem, 41-45;
Booker Washington’s attitude and
influence, 71-74; and new Ku Klux
Klan, 848.
“ Neri,” THE NEWS IN BRIEF, 636-637.
Netherlands, Hague case, 213.
Neutrality, rights and duties, 208; dur-
ing World War, 695-699; contraband,
699-701; transfer of flag, Dacia case,
709-710; search of baggage of minor
diplomatic officers, 710; American,
denounced, 715-718.—See also Sub-
marines.
Nevada, recall, 405-407.
New, Harry S., Republican campaign
committee, 376.
907
Newell, Frederick H., and reclamation,
309; WATER ON ARID LANDS, 312-
317.
New England, timber culture, 328.
New Hampshire, recall, 406; and syn-
dicalism, 457.
New International Year Book, 4.
New Jersey, timber culture, 328; and
syndicalism, 457.
Newlands, Francis G., and reclamation,
308.
New Mexico, pastoral development,
46; and irrigation, 47-48; problem of
Mexican population, 48-49; needs, 50;
political attitude, 50; prospects, 50-51.
New Orleans, as port, 63; saving from
flood, 251-255.
New Republic, cited, 5, 181, 296, 391;
Our War DEBTORS, 293-296; VOT-
ING FOR PRESIDENT, 387-391.
Newspapers, as sources, 5-6; trust con-
trol, 362-364; book reviews, 616-
617; tabloid, 632-636; satire on tab-
loid, 636-638; German treatment of
war correspondent, 749-754.
New Theater of New York, significance,
622.
New York, timber culture, 328.
New York City, Legal Aid Society, 584-
587.
New York Daily News, pioneer tabloid,
632-634.
New Vork Evening Post, 608.
New York Public Library, Bulletin,
619.
New York Times, cited, 6, 255, 285, 857;
THe REPUBLICAN LANDSLIDE OF
1928, 855-857.
New York Times Current History,
cited, 4, 185, 658, 662, 789, 814; WAR
SURGERY, 654-658; THe First CON-
TINUOUS TRANS-ATLANTIC FLIGHT,
658-612; THE ARMISTICE, 808-814.
New York World, 638, 694.
Niagara Falls, hydroelectric power, 39.
Nicaragua, intervention, 175, 176,
179-180, 184.
908
Nome, dog teams, 142.
North American Review, 5, 222, 501.
North Dakota, recall, 406, 407.
Northern Pacific Railroad, Northern
Securities, 91-94, 347-352, 360.
Northern Securities case, 91-94, 369;
Supreme Court decision, 347-352;
facts, 347-349.
Norway, Hague case, 212.
Novelists, Cabell, 623-624;
sheimer, 624-626.
Herge-
( BERNDORFF, Count von, armis-
/ tice, 811.
Official Congressional Directory, 4.
Ogg, Frederic Austin, National Prog-
Tess, 3, 77, 373; THE JAPANESE PROB-
LEM, 74-77; RAILROAD REGULATION,
3697373.
Ohio, recall, 406.
Oil, and Great Lakes empire, 39; ele-
ments of production, 50-55; explora-
tion and leasing, 51-53; financing,
speculation, 53-54; active and po-
tential power, 332, 333; center of
energy, 334; naval reserves scandal,
843-845.
Oklahoma, elements of oil production,
$1-55-
Older, Fremont, PURIFYING SAN FRAN-
cisco PoLitics, 400-405; My Own
Story, 405.
Olsen, Nils A., FEDERAL FARM LOANS,
296-300; Farm Credits, 300.
Open door, Hay’s achievement, 508-
509, 515.
Oregon, recall, 406.
Orlando, Vittorio E., peace conference,
816; and League, 817.
Osborn, Henry F., on melting “pot,
8o.
Outdoor life—See Sports, and Table
of Contents.
Outlook and Independent, cited, 5, 45,
50, 59, 122, 127, 132, 268, 395, 431,
439, 526, 613, 684, 843; PARCEL Post,
265-208; Million a Day, 268.
Index
P On Movinc PICTURES, 602-
' 09 694.
Padrones, in Italian labor, 68-69.
Page, Walter Hines, THE PAN-AMERI-
CAN EXPOSITION, 562-565; Pan-
American Exposition, 565, AN
AMBASSADOR ON Duty, 701-706; crit-
icized as Anglophile, 706-711; and
Dacia, 709-710.
Pageants, 622.
Pago Pago Bay, as harbor, 147.
Paine, Albert Bigelow, COMPLEXITIES
oF HOTEL OPERATION, 677-680;
Workings of a Modern Hotel, 680.
Paintings, Ladies’ Home Journal repro-
ductions, 573-575.
Panama, Canal treaty, 154; Roosevelt
and revolt, 167; as protectorate, 174,
176; alliance, 180.
Panama Canal, effect on railroads, 63;
construction, 153-156; sanitation,
155-156, 236; and German threat
against Venezuela, 190; reasons for
fortifying, 219-222; abrogation of
Clayton-Bulwer treaty, 514.
Pan-America, Hughes on problems,
181-185; supports, 182-185.
Pan-American Exposition, described,
562-565.
Paramount interest, doctrine, 166.
Parcel post, and rural life, 23; early
aspects and expectations, 265-267;
and express, 265; needs, 267—
268.
Parkman, Mary H., EDUCATION OF
JANE ADDAMS, 487-490; Heart of
Hull House, 490.
Parnell, W. M., White House custodian,
126.
Patent laws, proper basis, 361.
Patterson, J. M., and tabloid, 633.
Payne-Aldrich Act, 111-112.
Peace, Russo-Japanese, 95-96, 202-
203; purpose of League to Enforce
Peace, 214-218.—See also Arbitra-
tion, Disarmament, Hague, Ver-
sailles, World Court.
`
Nome — President
Pearson, Edmund Lester, REVIEW OF
Book REVIEWS, 616-619.
Peckham, Wheeler, on campaign con-
tributions, 381.
Peking, Boxer siege, 128-132.
Pendleton, Ore., rodeo, 55-59.
“Penguins,” 776.
Pennsylvania, timber culture, 328;
state police, 419-425; and syndical-
ism, 457; woman labor, 492-408.
Pensions, insurance as substitute, 727-
730.
Peonage, as remedy, 42.
Periodicals, list, 4-5; and trusts, 363-
365; book reviews, 616-619.
Pershing, John J., THe ST. MMHEL
OPERATION, 780-785; Final Report,
785.
Personal liberty, restrictions and prog-
ress, 446; and prohibition, 451.—See
also Freedom of speech.
Peru, Hague case, 212.
Pétain, Henri P., and American army,
781.
Philanthropy, problem, endowments
and continued liberal spirit, 576-579.
Philippines, Taft on progress (1907),
132-138; Assembly, 132; retention,
138.
Phillimore, Lord, and World Court,
5237524.
Phillips, Wiliam, THe DIPLOMATIC
SERVICE, 872-876; Cleaning Our Dip-
lomatic House, 876.
Pinchot, Gifford, controversy, 113; Pro-
gressive platform, 116; and conserva-
tion, 311.
Pink bollworm, invasion, method of
fighting, 340-346.
Pius funds case, 212.
Plastic surgery, 657.
Plato, on woman, 500.
Poetry, list of pieces, 12.
Police, problems of state, 418-425;
character, remedy, 421-422, 424-
425, 462-463.
Political Science Quarterly, 4.
909
Politics, corrupting power of patronage,
97-100; conflict of ideas within Re-
publican party, 106-112: Roosevelt
on conservatives, 118-122; Hawaiian,
145-146; influence of railroads, 353-
354; and crime, 460-464; psychology,
503; war-time, 723, 748; postbellum,
877-878.—See also Elections, Gov-
ernment, Suffrage, and Table of
Contents.
Polk, James K., and Monroe Doctrine,
165.
Poor whites, economic awakening, 36;
and negroes, 45.
Popular government, Roosevelt on
measures, 122; recall, 405-409; initi-
ative and referendum, 412-416.
Population, problem in Southwest, 48-
49; Samoan, 149-150.—See also
Table of Contents.
Porto Rico, American coöperation, 169-
173; under Spanish, 169; education,
169-170; economic progress, 170-
173; governmental conditions, 171-
173; health, 236.
Portsmouth, peace of, verses on, 202-
203.
Portugal, Hague cases, 213.
Postal service, facilities, 19; rural de-
livery, 22-23, 261-264; Philippine,
136; parcel post, 265-268; air mail,
276, 278.
Pound, Arthur, THE TELEPHONE IDEA,
672-676; Telephone Idea, 676.
Power, mechanical, water, in national
forests, 309-310; sources, 332-335;
Muscle Shoals project, 662-667.
Preparedness, mobilization of militia
(1916), 226-228; Roosevelt on lack,
742-748; Wood’s advocacy and treat-
ment, 744, 746; effect on war of lack,
746-748.
President, third-term question, 116-
117; daily tasks, 123-125; preparation
of papers, 125; social phase, 125-126;
misconception of burden, 126-127;
power, 387, 389; difficulties and
gio
dangers, and Congress, 389-391;
Coolidge’s taking of oath, 842.—See
also Coolidge, Elections, Harding,
Roosevelt, Taft, Wilson.
President Lincoln, transport, sunk, 807.
Press.—See Newspapers, Periodicals.
Pritchett, Henry S., TECHNICAL EDUCA-
TION FOR WOMEN, 490-493; American
Women in Industry, 493.
Progressive party, in campaign of 1912,
113-122.
Prohibition, enforcement of state, and
public opinion, 448-449; and joy-
killing, 450; and personal liberty, 451;
nullification, 455; bootlegging and
politics, 463-464; educational aspect,
600.
Prosperity, general distribution, 33-36.
Protectorates, in Caribbean region,
174, 175; motive, 175; procedure,
176, 179-180; effect, opposition, 176;
and investments, 177-179.
Psychology, of politics, 503.
Public affairs, classification of mate-
rials, 7-11.
Public debt.—See Debt.
Public opinon, and enforcement of
laws, 448-449, 452-456; Wilson and,
in foreign affairs, 549-550.
Pupin, Michael, From Immigrant to
Inventor, 644.
Pure Food and Drugs Act, 109.
Puritans, and drink, 450-451.
Putnam, George Palmer, SPORT IN THE
WEST, 55-59; Pendleton Round-Up,
59.
Putnam, Herbert, Library War Service,
740.
ACIAL ORIGINS, provision of
immigration act, 81.
Radio, broadcasting studio, 667-672;
entertainments, selection, charge,
668-669; opportunity, conduct of
broadcasters, 669-672.
Railroads, conditions of travel, 15-18;
Illinois Central, strategy of location,
Index
59-63; and Panama Canal, 63; combi-
nations, Northern Securities case, g1~
94, 347-352, 369; federal regulation,
109, 369-373; Philippine, 135-136;
Alaskan, 140; Hill and Great North-
ern, 256-259; government ownership,
352-355; political influence, 353-354;
anthracite lines and monopoly, 356-
359; physical valuation, 362; state
regulation, 371-372; intra- and inter-
state regulation, 373; Pullman strike,
530.
Ray, P. O., Political Parties, 5.
Raynham, Frederick P., attempted
trans-Atlantic flight, 659.
Recall, expansion, 405-406; features,
406-407; advisory, of federal offcials,
407-408; of judicial decisions, 408-
409, 436.
Reclamation.—See Table of Contents.
Reclamation Act, 110.
Recognition, of successful revolutions,
168.
Records of Poiltical Events, 4.
Recreation. See Sports, and Table of
Contents.
Reed, David A., racial origins provision,
81.
Reed, Walter,
236.
Religion, toleration, 29-30; of new gen-
eration, 853.
Reparations, in peace conference, 818;
impasse, problem, of amount and
ability, 885-88ọ.
Representation, and woman suffrage,
501, 504-505.
Republican party, Roosevelt’s influence,
106-107; economic wings, stand-
patters, 107-109; in elections of
1904 and 1908, 109; and economic
reforms, 109-111; split on tariff, 111-
112; and postbellum foreign relations,
877-878.—See also Politics.
Resources.—See Conservation, Eco-
nomic conditions, Power, Reclama-
tion.
yellow-fever work,
President — Russia
Rheims cathedral, poem on destruc-
tion, 754-757.
Rhodes, James Ford, McKinley and
Roosevelt Administrations, 3, 94;
ROOSEVELT THE TRUST BUSTER, 9I-
94.
Rice, E. W., Jr., on Steinmetz, 647-648.
Riis, Jacob A., OUR ITALIAN LABORERS,
Grs
Rindge, Fred H., Jr., FOREIGNERS IN
THE ARMY, 735-739; Uncle Sam’s
Adopted Nephews, 739.
Roads, former conditions, 18-19; Phil-
ippines, 135; Porto Rico, 170; army
and good, 237; improvement, basis
and expense, 271-274; no permanent,
274.—See also Automobile.
Roberts, Lord, and J. J. Hill, 258.
Robinson, Edgar E., Foreign Policy of
Woodrow Wilson, 6, 553; LEADERSHIP
oF Wooprow WILSON, 548-553.
Rockwell, W. E., as White House em-
ployee, 125.
Rodeo, described, 55-59.
Rogers, John J., on foreign service, 199.
Rogers, Will, and broadcasting, 671.
Roosevelt, Theodore, sources of period,
6; Autobiography, 6; Works, 6; Ency-
clopedia, 6; HYPHENATED AMERICAN-
ISM, 29-32; Fear God, 32; and Japanese
question, 75; Hanna and succes-
sion, 84-86; Hay on views, 86-90;
jiu jitsu, 88; and French, 89; election
of 1904, 89, 90, 109; and trusts,
Northern Securities Case, 91-94;
mediation in Russo-Japanese War,
95-96; and non-Caucasian nations,
96; party influence, 106-107; reform
measures, 109-110; campaign of 1912,
113-122; THE BOLTER’S JUSTIFICA-
TION, 117-122; Two Phases of the
Chicago Convention, 122; congratu-
lations to Philippines, 132; and Mon-
roe Doctrine, 161, 164; and Panama
Revolution, 167; and Santo Domingo,
167; WARNING TO THE GERMAN
EMPEROR, 190-192; and reclamation
QII
and conservation, 307, 309-311; and
railroad regulation, 354, 355, 368,
369; campaign manager, 374-375;
and recall of judicial decisions, 436;
THE COURTS AND LABOR, 467-470;
on woman suffrage, 498; and Sims,
520, 521; on Root, 523; on Bok’s
architectual efforts, 575; Seeger’s
tribute, 716-717; Broomstick PRE-
PAREDNESS, 743-748; Great Adven-
ture, 748; on White, 814; Ananias
Club, 832; genius for play, 832; and
advice, 833.
Roosevelt Dam, 48.
Root, Elihu, and campaign manage-
ment, 87; AMERICA’S PEACE PoLicy,
203-209; Instructions to Delegates to
Hague Conference, 209; JosrepH H.
CHOATE, 514-517; Men and Policies,
517; attitude as public servant, 523-
526; and Washington Conference,
523, 525-520, and World Court,
523-524.
Ross, Robert, capture of Washington,
225.
Rostron, Arthur H., and Titanic rescue,
250.
Rowell, Chester, Progressive platform,
r16.
Roy, Golden M., and graft, 403-405.
Rozhdestvensky, Ziniry P., incident,
210.
Ruef, Abraham, graft, 400-405.
Rural free delivery, effect, 22-23, 264;
working, 261-264; temporary opposi-
tion, 261, 262; boxes, 263-264.
Rural life, conveniences, 22-25; move-
ment toward, 22; influence of trans-
planted city man, 25; and automobile,
268-271.
Russell, Bertrand, on Allied propa-
ganda, 708.
Russell, Charles Edward, THEODORE
THOMAS, 565-570; American Orches-
tra, 570.
Russia, Hague case, 213; and open door,
508; Borah’s policy, 537.
gi2
Russo-Japanese War, Roosevelt’s me-
diation, 95-96, 202-203; British
trawlers incident, 210-211.
t. Mihiel, American operation, 780-
785.
St. Nicholas, 490, 616, 803.
Salt, production, 39.
Salt River project, 48.
Salvador, American loan, service, 178.
Samoa, naval administration of Ameri-
can, 146, 148; physical aspects, 147-
149; local administration, 148; co-
coanut, 149; people, 149-151.
Sandburg, Carl, as poet, 627.
San Diego, U.S.S., loss, 805
San Francisco, disaster, work of army,
240-245; graft, purification, 400-
405; street-car strike, 401-403.
Santo Domingo.—See Dominican Re-
public.
Sanville, Florence Lucas, Nicht WORK
FOR WOMEN, 493-498; Woman in the
Pennsylvania Silk-Mills, 498.
Sault Ste. Marie, hydroelectric power,
39-
Savannah, as port, 63.
Schlesinger, Arthur M., Political and
Social History, 3.
Schmitz, Eugene F., graft, 400-405.
Schneider, R. B., Republican campaign
committee, 376.
Schoffelmayer, Victor H., THE PINK
INVADER, 340-346.
Scholarship, defined, 607.
Schroeder, Seaton, Americanism, 31.
Schumann-Heink, Ernestine, and broad-
casting, 670.
Science, classification of materials, ro.
—See also Table of Contents.
Scott, Emmett J., A SELF-MADE NEGRO,
71-74; Booker T. Washington, 74.
Scott, Nathan B., Republican cam-
paign committee, 376, 377.
Scribner's Magazine, 5, 55, 226, 271.
Seagle, William, CRIMINAL SyNDICAL-
ISM, 456-460.
Index
Seattle, Great Northern docks, 259.
Seeger, Alan, A MESSAGE TO AMERICA,
715-718; Poems, 718, 765; IN
MEMORY OF THE AMERICAN VOLUN-
TEERS, 762-705.
Selfridge, T. E., aviation accident, 643.
Seligman, E. R. A., Encyclopedia of
Social Science, 3.
Senate, United States, Documents, 289.
Senate Committee on Commerce, THE
SINKING OF THE TITANIC, 245-251.
Seward, William H., and Mexico, 166.
Sex, attitude of new generation, 854.
Seymour, Charles, Woodrow Wilson, 3.
Shantung, in peace conference, 8109,
864.
Shaw, Albert, Woodrow Wilson: Mes-
sages and Papers, 6.
Shaw, Leslie M., story, 87.
Shepherd, William R., UNCLE Sam,
IMPERIALIST, 174-181.
Sherman Act. See Trusts.
Shiller, Ivan, and pink bollworm, 340.
Shippee, Lester B., Recent American
History, 3, 7.
Silver, David, artificial leg, 657.
Sims, William S., character as naval
officer, 518-522; World War services,
519-520; and aircraft, 522; armistice,
812.
Sinclair, H. F., oil scandal, 843-845.
Sitka, 141.
Skagway, 141.
Skinner, Robert, P., and outbreak of
World War, 704.
Sloan, R. E., on Arizona, 47, 49.
Slosson, Edwin E., THE UNIVERSITY OF
Topay, 601-604; American Spirit in
Education, 604.
Smith, Alfred E., presidential candi-
dacies, 845, 855-857.
Smith, George Otis, SOURCES OF
MECHANICAL POWER, 332-335: Worlé
of Power, 335.
Smithsonian Institution, Annual Re-
port, 317, 643.
Social conditions, classification of ma-
Russo-Japanese War — Syndicalism
terials, 11-12; manners, 25-29.—
See also Education, Religion, and
Table of Contents.
Social reform, and woman’s movement,
502-505.
Socialism, Debs as leader, 531-532.
Sources, educative value, 1-2; charac-
ter of present day, 2; how to find and
use, 2—7; classification, 7-13.
South, economic awakening, 36; and
immigrants, 41-42; timber culture,
328; and prohibition, 448-449; in
election of 1928, 856.—See also
Negroes.
South Dakota, and syndicalism, 457.
Spain, Hague case, 213.
Speculation, oil fields, 53-55.
Speers, L. C., SAVING NEW ORLEANS,
25125 K
Spies, German, 724-725; hysteria over,
730-734-
Sports, rodeo, 55-59; Nome dog team
races, 142; collegiate, 602; baseball,
680-684.
Spreckels, Rudolph, and graft, 4or.
Springfield Republican, 6.
Stage, travel by, 18-19.
Stanton, Theodore, and Roosevelt, 89.
Star-shells, 759.
State sovereignty, and government
ownership, 352; recent adverse les-
sons, 880.
States, party organization, 383-384;
railroad regulation, 371, 373.—See
also Table of Contents.
Statesman’s Year Book, 4.
Statistics, activities of federal bureau,
IOIO:
Steamboat Inspection Service, 103.
Steamships.—See Great Lakes.
Steel industry, development by army,
235.
Steinmetz, Charles P., arrival in Amer-
ica, 644-645; first job, 645-646; nat-
uralization, 646; and General Ejec-
tric, 646-648; as professor, 648-649.
Stevens, John F., Panama Canal, 155.
913
Stimson, Henry L., on venereal dis-
ease, 597.
Stokes, Rose Pastor, conviction, 829,
830.
Stone, W. J., and railroad regulation,
354.
Stout, William B., FLIVVERS OF THE
AIR, 275-279.
Stowe, Lyman Beecher, A SELF-MADE
NEGRO, 71-74; Booker T. Washington,
74.
Streets, in commercial section, 411-
412; Chicago’s traffic problem, 416-
419.
Strickland, Mable, rodeo champion, 57.
Submarine chasers, 804.
Submarines, attacks on merchant ves-
sels, Lusitania, 544-547, 559, 71I-
715, 725; German embassy’s warning,
713-714; experience on torpedoed
ship, 799-801; precautions against,
on American coast, 804-805; and
American war transportation, losses
due to, 805-807.
Suffrage, service of woman, 498-505.
Sugar, Hawaiian industry, 144-145;
Porto Rican, 170.
Sullivan, Mark, Our Times, 3; THE
WASHINGTON CONFERENCE, 881-884;
Conference, First and Last, 884.
Sunday observance, modern blue-law
propaganda, 444-448; and personal
liberty, 446.
Supreme Court, Northern Securities
case, 93, 347-352, 369; decision on
coal monopoly, 356-359; and railroad
regulation, 371, 373; justices charac-
terized (1911), 426-431, 510-513;
five-to-four decisions considered, 436-
439; labor boycott case, 470-473.
Surgery, of World War, 654-658; anti-
sepsis, 655-656; face restoration, 657;
reclamation, 657-658.
Sweden, Hague case, 212.
Syndicalism, laws against criminal, 456-
459; prohibition of meetings, 459-
460; war-time hysteria, 731-734.
914
ABLOID NEWSPAPERS, intro-
duction, 632; news, 633, 636; pic-
ture, 633-635; satire on, 636-638.
Taft, William Howard, election, 109;
measures of administration, 111; and
tariff, 111-112; conservation contro-
versy, 113; campaign of 1912, I13-
118; PROGRESS IN THE PHILIPPINES,
132-138; Address at Philippine As-
sembly, 138; and Central America,
167; and railroad regulation, 372;
and reform of judiciary, 433-434;
on League of Nations, 864, 880.
Tampa, U.S.S., loss, 806.
Tanks, varieties, action, 765-766; pur-
pose, mechanical and human soldiers,
767-769.
Tariff, information on foreign, 104; and
Republican party (1909), 111-112;
Commission and Customs Court, 111;
liberal program, 360.
Tattooing, in Samoa, 151.
Tawney, James A., Republican cam-
paign committee, 377.
Taxation, equalization of city, 398-400;
disuse of laws, 453.—See also Tariff.
Taylor, E. S., TRAFFIC PROBLEM OF
CHICAGO, 416-419; Plan of Chicago,
410.
Technical and vocational education, for
women, 490-493; in schools, 589; of
disabled service men, 591; improve-
ments, 599; Steinmetz as professor,
648-649; in training camps, 740.
Tegland, Howard, rodeo champion,
57:
Telegraph,
136.
Telephone, facility, 20; in rural life,
2z; Philippine, 136; idea, 672-676;
and district unification, 672-673; and
scope of management, 6723-675;
future, 675-676.
Ten Eyck, Andrew, ELIHU Root, 522-
526; Elihu Root, 526.
Tetanus, prevention, 655.
Texas, pink bollworm, 340-346.
facility, 19; Philippine,
Index
Thach, Charles C., MODERN MONROE
DOCTRINE, 165-168; Monroe Doctrine,
168.
Thayer, William R., John Hay, go,
192.
Third term, question in campaign of
IQI2, 116-117.
Thomas, Augustus, as dramatist, 621.
Thomas, Theodore, as orchestra leader,
565-570.
Thrasher, Leon C., killed, 711.
Thrasher, Max Bennet, RURAL FREE
DELIVERY, 261-264; Thirty Miles
with a Rural Carrier, 264.
Ticknor, George, and elective system,
603.
Tillman, Benjamin R., and Negro, 42.
Tipping, practice, 20.
Titanic, sinking, report of Senate com-
mittee, 245-251.
Tobacco, Porto Rican trade, 170.
Toleration, complete, and American-
ism, 29-30.
Torpedoed ship, experience, 799-801.—
See also Submarines.
Training camps, activities, 739-743;
health and morals program, 739, 742-
743; club life, 739-740; education,
740; hostess houses, female society,
740-742; on leave, 741-742; sports,
entertainments, 742; Plattsburg, 744;
lack of matériel, 745.
Transfusion of blood, 656.
Transportation, on Great Lakes,
charges, 38-40; rail-water transfer,
40; Alaskan dog teams, 142.—See
also Aviation, Commerce, Panama
Canal, Railroads, Roads, Streets,
Travel, next title, and Table of Con-
tents.
Transportation of A. E. F., British
ships, 747, 794; American ships, 794;
system, growth, 795; repair and use
of seized German ships, 795-798;
cargo ships, 798-799; destroyers as
convoy, 802-803; and submarine
attacks, 804-807.
Tabloid Newspapers — Wall Street
Travel, classification of materials, 11;
Muirhead on conditions, 14-21;
modern hotel, 677-680.—See also
Transportation.
Travieso, Martin, on American citizen-
ship, 173.
Treaties.—See Portsmouth, Versailles.
Trench fever, treatment, 655.
Tripartite guarantee treaty, 818.
Trusts, Roosevelt and Northern Secu-
rities case, 91-94; disuse of Anti-
Trust Act, 453; labor case, 470-473.
—See also Industry, and Table of
Contents.
Tucker, Ray T., WitttAm E. BORAR,
533-537; Borah of Idaho, 537.
Tumulty, Joseph B., Woodrow Wilson,
Tung Fu-Hsiang, and Boxers, 130.
Turkey, Hague case, 213.
Turko-Italian War, French incidents,
211, 213.
Turner, F. J., Guide to the Study of
American History, 3, 5.
Tuscania, transport, sunk, 806.
Twain, Mark.—See Clemens, Samuel
IL
Typhoid, prevention, 655.
NDERWOOD, Oscar W., THE Cor-
RUPTING POWER OF PUBLIC PAT-
RONAGE, 97-100.
Unger, Walter, and Thomas, 567.
Union College, Steinmetz as professor,
648-649.
United States Daily, 6.
United States Reports, 352, 358, 473.
United States v. Reading Company,
356-359.
United States v. Rose Pastor Stokes,
829, 830.
Universities.—See Colleges.
University of Chicago, innovations, 604.
AN ANDA, Carr V., on tabloid,
635.
Van Devanter, Willis, as Justice, 430.
9I5
Van Doren, Carl, Two EMINENT NOVEL-
ISTS, 623-626; Contemporary Ameri-
can Novelists, 626.
Van Norman, Henry Everett, RURAL
CONVENIENCES, 22-25.
Vanselow, Captain, armistice, 811.
Van Valkenburgh, A. S., and Espionage
Act, 829.
Venereal disease, evil, 451; in army,
597) 739) 742-743.
Venezuela, boundary controversy, 166;
and Germany, 190-192, 212; Hague
case, 212.
Verhauren, Emile, translation of poem,
754-757:
Versailles, peace of, sources, 7; Wilson’s
attendance, 541-543, 814; conference,
814-819; American commission, 814;
reception of Wilson, 815; attitude of
powers, 815; management, Council
of Ten, Big Four, 815-816; Wilson’s
position and policy, 816-819, 821,
864; tripartite guarantee treaty, 818;
mandatories, 818; reparations, 818-
819, 885-889; Shantung, 819; signing,
819; Borah’s denunciation, imperi-
alism, 820-822; America’s duty to
halt effect, 822-823; Wilson on Amer-
ican abandonment, 870-871; Ameri-
can reaction toward isolation, 876-
878.—See also League of Nations.
Villéon, Petit de la, lung operation, 656.
Vinh-Long, French transport, rescue,
220-234.
Vocational training.—See Technical.
Vosberg-Rekow, ——, on consuls, 188.
Y ACKER, Cuartes H., and Chi-
cago traffic problem, 418.
Wadsworth, James W., Jr., on mobili-
zation of militia, 228; HENRY CABOT
LODGE, 527-530.
Wainwright, Richard, Americanism, 31.
Walker, M. L., and San Francisce
disaster, 241.
Walker, Stuart, as producer, 622.
Wall Street, Roosevelt on attitude, 92.
g16
Wallas, Graham, on politics and psy-
chology, 503.
“Wamp,” THE NEWS IN BRIEF, 636-
638.
War, rules on land operations, 207.
—See also Neutrality, Peace, World
War.
War Birds, 774.
Ward, Robert De Courcy, OUR NEW
IMMIGRATION Poticy, 78-83.
Ward, William L., Republican cam-
paign committee, 376.
Warner, G. B., rural mail deliverer, 262.
Washington, Booker T., influence and
attitude, 44, 45; characteristics, 71-
74-
Washington, George, on temporary al-
liances, 724.
Washington, recall,
syndicalism, 457.
Washington Conference, Roots ex-
pected attitude, 523, 525-526; nega-
tive results, 879; Harding on purpose,
881-883; language, 883; Hughes’s
program, 883-884.
Water power. — See Hydroelectric.
Waterways, work of army engineers,
234; conservation, 310.
Wealth, general distribution, 33-36.
Weeks, John W., PEAcrE-Tive WORK
OF THE ARMY, 234-239; Other Things
the Army Does, 239.
Welliver, Judson C., THE PROJECT AT
MUSCLE SHOALS, 662-667; Muscle
Shoals Power and Industrial Project
667;! PRESIDENT HARDING, 831-836;
Harding, 836.
Wemyss, Sir Rosslyn, armistice, 812.
Werrenrath, Reinald, and broadcasting,
670.
West, Victor J., Foreign Policy of Wood-
row Wilson, 6, 553; LEADERSHIP OF
Wooprow WILSON, 548-553.
Weygand, Maxime, armistice, 812.
Weyl, Walter E., AMERICA AND EURO-
PEAN COMPETITION, 193-197; Ameri-
can World Policies, 197.
405, 406; and
Index
Wheat Executive, war-time, 719.
Wheeler, Burton K., oil investigation,
844.
Wheelock, John H., on Seeger, 714.
White, Edward D., as Chief Justice,
426-427.
White, Henry, peace conference, 814.
White, Stanford, on Bok’s architec-
tural efforts, 572.
White, William A., Progressive plat-
form, 116.
Wildcatting, oil, 51-52.
William II of Germany, and Russo-
Japanese War, 96; and Venezuela,
190-192; abdication, 813.
Wilson, Woodrow, sources of period, 6-
7; and Japanese question, 75; routine
as President, 124, 125; presidency and
health, 126-127; RELATIONS OF THE
UNITED STATES WITH MEXICO, 156-
161, 551; Latin-American policy, 168;
unofficial foreign agents, 201; REG-
ULATION OF ‘TRUSTS, 365-368; on
nomination of President, 394; and
precedents, 538-543; reading mes-
sages before Congress, 538-540}; con-
ferences at Capitol, 540; and Cabinet,
S41, 557; going to Paris, 541-543,
814; sinking of Lusitania, and ‘‘ too
proud to fight” speech, 544-547,
559; elements of foreign policy, 548-
553; and democracy, 548-550; and
equality of nations, 550-551; and
arbitration and war, 551, 559-561;
consistency of policy, 552; and re-
sults, 552-553; Houston’s estimate,
553-561; belief in Providence and
might of right, 553-554; unselfish,
554-555; and fellowman, 555-556;
mentality, 556-557; and advice, 557-
558, 832; as writer and speaker, 558-
559; fame, 561; on real neutrality,
706; THE LUSITANIA NOTE, 711-715;
and preparedness, 745; war-time pol-
itics, 748; and armistice, 808-811;
and framing League of Nation, 814,
817, 821; reception in Europe, 815;
Wallas — Youth’s Companion
position and policy in peace con-
ference, 815-819, 821, 864; and tri-
partite guarantee treaty, 818; WIL-
SON ON THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS,
858-862; and reservations on League,
866; TURNING Our BACKS, 870-871.
Winter, William, and drama, 620.
Winterfeld, General von, armistice, 811.
Wirt, William, PUBLIC SCHOOL IDEALS,
588-590.
Wisconsin, recall, 406, 407.
Witt, Peter, and tax reform, 399.
Women, travel conditions, 17; flapper
as symbol, 33-35; attitude of new
generation, 854.—See also Table of
Contents.
Wood, Leonard, efforts for prepared-
ness, treatment by administration,
744, 746.
Woodrow, James, as speaker, 556.
Workmen’s compensation, inadequacy,
482-486; spread, 482-483; disability
and death benefits, 483-485; thera-
peutic relief, 485-486; soldier’s in-
surance as analogy, 727, 730.
World Almanac, 4.
World Court, Root on desire, 207; his
plan, 523-524; provision in League,
818; actuality, 867; question of
American support, 867-870.
World Peace Foundaiion Pamphlet
Series, 213.
World War, sources, 7; classification
of materials, 13; and American com-
merce, 194; Liberty Loan, 286-289;
Choate’s services, 516-517; Sims’s
services, 519-520; Wilson and sink-
917
ing of Lusitania, 544-545, 711-715;
his “‘ too proud to fight” speech, 545-
547, 559; Wilson’s policy and Ameri.
can participation, 553, 560; rehabil-
itation of disabled men, 591-596, 658;
surgery, 654-658.—See also Allied
loans, Versailles, and Table of Con-
tents.
World’s Work, 40, 189, 260, 565, 680,
701, 884.
Wright, Henry, on decay of the house,
582.
Wright, Orville, aviation, 640-643.
Wright, Wilbur, aviation, 639-643.
Wu Ting-Fang, A CHINESE VIEW OF
AMERICAN MANNERS, 25-20; Ameri-
can Dinners and American Manners,
20.
ELLOW FEVER, elimination, 236.
Yosemite, poem on waters, 690-
691.
Young, Allyn A., Post-War REPARA-
TIONS, 885-889.
Young, James T., PARTY ORGANIZATION
IN STATE AND COUNTY, 383-387; New
American Government, 387, 435; FED-
ERAL JUDICIARY SYSTEM, 432-435.
Young Men’s Christian Association,
teaching of aliens, 597; at training
camps, 739; women with, at front,
790-793.
Young Women’s Christian Association,
at training camps, 740-741.
Youth, attitude of new generation, 849-
851.
Youth’s Companion, 67, 71, 493»
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